Ahab of Dystopia
by TheWeasleyBoys
Summary: "I had a lot more to worry about than a few bezoomny vecks in black vestments who couldn't govoreet to save their souls." Part 24 now playing.
1. Chapter 1

**Ahab of Dystopia**

**One**

There was a full white Luna out tonight, and it looked like a real bright one, too, even through all this pollution and other nasty stuff in the air.

It helped me viddy just about everything within a one-mile radius—the black water in front of me; the dark, decaying buildings behind me and around me; the rookerfuls of newspaper, tin cans, paper bags, and other trash blowing around; the fires of a pack of grahzny beggars in the distance; even the occasional auto coming and going across the otherwise empty street. Everything else was just artificial and man-made, like those street lamps on the corner or that stop light shining red-green-yellow-red in the distance. It was just me out here so far, but I expected the others would arrive at our usual meeting spot soon enough, and me right along behind 'em. Two years and six months running, and none of 'em had ever been late by a single minute.

I could also viddy the moon really good not just once, but twice, because as I stood in this alley by the marina, I could viddy it in the sky and in the water at the same time. It was almost as though there were a pair of glazzies on the horizon where I stood, watching my every move and the movements of all that lived here. Those glazzies could watch all they liked, though, because that was all they could do. Lucky for me, neither the Luna in the sky nor the one in the water could ever tell anyone what I decided to do tonight. If I went on being lucky, none of my nightly victims would find out until long after it happened, after which they could go complain to the rozzes and the gazetta and all that cal.

I viddied a lot of things every nochy, but I didn't slooshy much, since it was just me and a few rookerfuls of other Nadsats out here. Right now, it was just the sounds of my own breathing and the slight rush of the water to keep myself company. I had no father to try and talk me into coming back home, and my dear old Em was busy spatting soundly back around the middle floors after a long day at the diner and a _short_ visit from three vecks. I could go back inside and then hang out by the windowsill of my malenky apartment as long as I wanted to, enjoy some of this cold air, of course, and slooshy to that water as much as I liked. I could also like sneak out onto the railing and bug the kids of the other whores that hang out here from time to time for a good smeck. I just didn't think I wanted to do that tonight. I might have a few important visits of my own to make instead.

First off, I had to get out of this flatblock of a neighborhood, if a lewdie could even call it that any more. It was a wonder no State inspector slapped a 'Condemned' sign on this place yet, what with the cracking foundations, leaky walls, and all that cal. I would have to leave as careful as I can, though not entirely because of home sweet home's decay. I would have to sneak out all quiet-like because there was no telling who else was waiting up alongside me, hoping to start a bitva later. I liked a fight as much as the next malchick, of course…just not yet, because the time wasn't right to start or finish it. That could wait till later. Right now, I would sneak out of this apartment, take the staircase, go straight to the station, travel the Underground, and finally say no more. Good thing I hung onto some cutter from my last night out, otherwise I'd have to gooly to the next part of this city all by myself. Instead, the train would do well enough for me, as it was a very long way from here to there.

Along the way, as I headed into the big pit under the streets, I came across this malenky bit of advertising with a happy young devotchka telling me she would be mine all mine if I got myself a pack of Lucky Strikes. I pulled a black marker out of my carman and made her tell the world that she like cheated on her boyfriend with five other malchicks. That would make any other person who viddied this think twice before they took up smoking. It was only after I turned away and stepped onto the train that I remembered her eemya. Lydia. Lydia the model, Lydia the calendar girl, Lydia who got into a pretty painted picture and wound up on the wall of a thousand malchicks' bedrooms. Too bad she was in that poster and not here in real life, otherwise I would have got her against that wall a thousand razzes whether she wanted it or not, and all on my oddy knocky, too.

It was a long ride from here to the junkyard, but for one such as myself, it was worth it. Back home, I was just one slut's firstborn, slave to the heavy lifting at the restaurant, broke nine times out of ten, and easy pickings for whatever Em's John wanted to do to me. In this station, I could take the midnight train on time, itty off with my own kind, and be nobody else. And out there, I was at the head of my own malenky brigade, making sure that we, like the trains, always arrived and exited on time. There were six of us as of late, well over the limit for a usual gang, but necessary 'cause we knew of at least one gruppa that liked to get in our way and sneak into our borders for a smeck and a lashing. There were two runaways from the local sanatorium, Toby and Charlie, who might have stayed locked away for bizarre behavior at skolliwoll if one of the nurses hadn't carelessly left a back door open one night. When Charlie wasn't grilling me about the best way to tolchock a veck unconscious or the best weapon to use in a drat, he'd be the number-one to taste whatever firegold or wine we came across in our nightly wanderings to make sure it was fresh and strong enough to share with the rest of us.

Toby neither talked nor smecked that much, but he was the perfect kid to go explore a space or building to assure no rozzes were hiding nearby. If the mesto was clear, he'd do fine in whatever we decided to do next. If not, he'd be twitchy and shifty until we found a better place to filly about. All was sparkling clear and quiet for now, though, for he gave me a tip of the shlapa as soon as I shoved my way through the rusty gate. Already I could hear 'The Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin blaring from Leo's pocket radio, as well as the zvooks of like shouting, cheering, and fisties hitting litsos. Some of 'em must have gotten restless, I thought, drawing closer to where my gang waited for me. I wasn't poogly or worried about what they'd say to me later, though. Good mood or bad, at the end of the day, we were pretty much all the same—thieves, runaways, whoresons, fighters, rapists, and the worst of the worst. Good mood or bad, as soon as we headed out into the empty streets and started our nightly rounds, I knew they'd all feel better.

To that end, I left Toby on his oddy-knocky to watch a malenky while longer so that I could go plan tonight's events. Further past the gate and beside the skeleton of an old Ford, I saw Nick and Leo in the middle of a fistfight while Charlie and Joel looked on, either cheering together or jeering separately with each move the other two made. That might have been all fun and games for them, but if they used up all their energy right now, all they'd want to do later on would be to itty back home and spat. That was something I just couldn't have happen, especially since I had all my wits and energy about me, as well as wanting to use 'em.

"Attention!"

And so, after I'd pulled out my nozh and clanged it against the old Ford's hood to make them wake up, I let 'em all know what was going on so that none of 'em would mess up later.

"You all got five minootas 'til we head out, my old droogs. Anybody not ready by then has to head home and miss all the fun. Meet me at the gate."

As I turned myself around and headed back to where Toby kept watch, I heard the scuff of leather against the ground, the clatter of weapons being gathered up, and the drones and mumbles of my friends' voices as they felt all disappointed over not finding a satisfying end to their malenky battle. They wouldn't have to complain long, if we got lucky tonight and found ourselves some bigger targets than one another. Might even get the chance to slug it out with _them_, that is, if they're not too poogly to give us all a try at once. Until then, we'd have to save some of our combined strength just in case _they_ decided to appear.

"What's the plan tonight, Billyboy?" Leo asked me, slinking alongside me like the beast of his eemya.

"The usual," I said, motioning for Toby to leave his post and join the rest of us as we passed through the gate. Another shlapa tip from him, and he'd entered our malenky group of criminals as surely as one lone wolf rejoined its pack. Good thing, too, 'cause I'd need all five of 'em where I was headed tonight. About six or seven blocks away, in a less grahzny part of the city, I'd heard that some well-to-do lewdies were hosting a party in some fancy meeting spot. When folks like them got together, they'd just about always have some kind of wine, beer, or other alcohol lying around to lift their spirits. And if there were horrorshow drinks to be had, then they wouldn't mind a few malchicks sharing in the celebration, now, would they?

That was some distance away from where we walked, so naturally, we'd need something to do in the meantime. We didn't have to smot long or far, though, because some shoot had driven himself out into the middle of an intersection whilst govoreeting away on his mobile. Not only that, but he'd just about stopped before a row of garbage cans full of starry pipes and other stuff, all thanks to the State pick-up service not grabbing 'em before sunrise. It was a very baddiwad idea, of course, that a moodge should not pay attention and cause a potential road hazard the way he did. It was time for a lesson to be taught.

"You viddy those garbage cans and pipes over there, old droogs?" I asked, taking a stick of Blammo gum out of my pocket and stuffing it into my rot.

"They'll do. Keep quiet now, we don't want 'im pulling away before we have our fun, do we?"

Our next set of moves went real smooth, much like the pistons in an engine or the roar of a motor. While Leo, Toby, and the other three started sneaking up on the car from behind, I waited on the sidewalk for the chatter inside to viddy them and try to inch his machine forward. After a quick peek into the rearview where he saw 'em coming, lo and behold, he goes and moves the gas down a malenky bit to try and get to a safer place where he could go on govoreeting and smecking and everything else. Unfortunately for him, that was when I stepped out into the street in front of his auto, and with a quick swing of one of those pipes, I gave the bratchny a good dent of broken glass and a shock to the old system.

It took five seconds for him to come out of that old tin can, try like giving me a piece of his rasoodock, and press the emergency numbers all at once; only to viddy my droogs jump up about five more seconds later and, with their own pipes in hand, smash his car windows one by one, smecking and jeering as they went merrily along. That was when the veck inside decided it would be better to run for cover, as his poor bolshy machine was now a busted-up mess and we were running out of windows to break. I didn't stop there, though. I got to trip him up and smash the malenky mobile for good measure, and boohoohoo, that man didn't have anyone to chatter at no more. He took off at a run to go call for help or whatever lewdies might be around at this hour to give him a ride. I didn't feel like ittying off after him, though, cause we'd already had all the fun we wanted to have with himself and his machines, however bolshy or malenky they might be. There were other, bigger places to take a peek at tonight, and we weren't gonna waste any time getting ourselves there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** My thanks to PandaLove for…well, showing me some love for the first chapter of this tale. This character has been quite a mystery to me, and now here's my chance to give him a background and a personality. And, because I got a visit from seventeen brave souls on the first chapter of this story, henceforth our B.B. will be referred to as a seventeen-year-old. I have said it, let it be written.

Now, for my next trick…

**Two**

The Luna was real high in the sky now, a big big white glazzie for all to viddy and get a little moment of silence and awww in between. It got a good look of me and mine sneaking our way over to the back door of a starry lecture hall, the front of which was named the meeting place for the party I told my droogs about. The front was where the greeters and other well-to-do guests were govoreeting and smecking, whilst the back door had no veck or zheena wandering around to make sure no gatecrashers arrived. That was how my gang got in at all, as well as how we started our true fun of this nochy.

"Up City, up City, up City," Toby chanted to himself in a sort of sing-song goloss, doing a malenky skipping dance as we made our way through the corridors of the big hall and found where the main room waited for us. The rest of us got a bit of a smeck out of this, 'cause if there was anything Toby thought of as fun and games, it was frightening a large group of lewdies gathered and unsuspecting like they were here. We passed through the double doors side by side in three pairs, and right away a rookerful of those lewdies gasped at the sight of us, so poogly that they almost dropped their champagne glasses.

"A very good evening to you, ladies and gents," I said to 'em, pretending to be all polite and tipping my shlapa to them as we walked by. "Good evening, begging your pardons…excuse us, please, thank you, pardons…ah, here we are, boys."

The crowd parted ways like the Red Sea itself to let us through, giving us all a clear line to the table where they kept their champagne, beer, and other horrorshow spirits of the night. More than a few started talking amongst themselves about who we were and just where the bloody hell we had come from; yet we paid them no mind. We had better things to do, and we would not waste time trying to do them. As was our special malenky ritual, Charlie stepped ahead of the rest of us to sample the goods, and once he'd taken a sip or two of the nearest glass, he turned back to me with a grin of triumph.

"Mateus _Rosé, and it's not yet found room temperature," he giggled, wiping the rim of the glass with one sleeve before passing it on to me. "Who else is up for a bit?"_

That was the cue for the remaining four of my gang to step forward, and step forward they did to take their share one by one. We clinked our glasses together as though to make a toast and, in front of those gaping, muttering lewdies, swallowed every drop of what we'd crasted from their table. How sweet it was.

"Excuse me, sir…"

That was when I saw little Miss Lydia in all her snooty, perfect, overdressed glory; trying to look all pure and wholesome in her fancy white dress, her shiny, silver fur-trimmed coat, and her clean white matching sabogs. Along she came with a dark look in her glazzie, a look I knew I wouldn't get under any normal circumstances, let alone a dark one. She always thought of herself as higher up in the world, but she thought wrong. She wished she could be higher up than the rest of us, actually, but her platties were the only pure thing she had on her, and on us all not-so-fancy malchicks, too. More 'n just a few of us knew the truth. She only dressed like that to hide how she did the old in-out with two boys during the same week, and didn't let Mr. Odin know whenever she was off with Mr. Dva until both of 'em found out and put each other in the hospital. But that didn't matter at all right now. There were already a mess of messels running through my rasoodock as she stood up, all of which involved Miss Perfect Lydia without all them fancy platties on. Before I got to tell her about all those messels, though, she'd opened her rot to let me and my fighters know just what a bunch of baddiwad little malchickiwicks we all were.

"Excuse me, sir, but this is a private party, and none of you were invited. Can you please leave us alone?"

Oh ho ho. Listen to her saying please and excuse me sir, all nice and proper like to us filthy miscreants. Listen to me, too, showing how much I don't care for all that.

"Excuse _me_, my lovely, but you got all this nice drink lying around, and you can't finish it all on your own. Mind letting us share in the festivities?"

My droogs smecked out loud at the sight of her angry face, and I smecked right along with 'em. We would not go down that easily, little sister.

"Actually, I do mind you breaking in and trying to steal from my party, thank you very much. Why can't you just go buy your own instead, and leave us be?"

Her goloss got so snotty and annoying by then that I started feeling bezoomny myself. I neither liked her tone nor that condescending look in her glazzies, and all those odd looks from her guests didn't help me much, either. I'd been dealing with that cal for all of my jeezny, and I wasn't about to put up with any more, especially from this devotchka. With one rooker in my carman and the other on my bottle, I jumped down to stare her right in the face, daring her to keep her tough little lady act going.

" 'Cause I mind your snapping and glaring and treating people like dirt under your shoes, that's why," I growled, gripping my nozh's handle just in case she pushed me into using it later.

" 'Cause _everybody_ minds the tone of your voice these days, that's why. How'd you like it if someone treated you like filth some time, little sister?"

I took one step forward at a time, and I loved the way she took one step backward as though I were leading her in one of those gloopy fancy tango dances. Even with me threatening her, she still had to go and act all proper as though that might make me change my mind. I would _not_, of course. I enjoyed watching her back away too much, and I wanted a chance to make her fall down backwards, too.

"How'd you like it if someone made you found out what it feels like, always underneath someone else and all that cal? Would you like me to show all your happy little guests right here and now?"

"All-all right now, let's not get too—"

"—Oh no no _no_, let's indeed get too angry, my lovely." 

I reached over and shoved one of the trays of champagne flutes onto the floor, forcing her and a few others to run away so that they wouldn't get hit by the breaking glass or the dripping bubblies.

"Let's ruin all your nice fancy food so you'll find out what it's like to have nothin' to munch on of a night."

Another shove, and another tray of champagne got knocked to the ground, leaving a sharp glittering, drippy mess behind me.

"Let's make sure you don't have no sparkling clear drinks so you know how it is to drink naught but water every day."

One more shove to a stack of china plates behind those flutes, and then my nozh was out for all to see.

"And let's find out how you like eatin' glass off the floor for once, you filthy little soomka!"

I'd grabbed her by the arm and forced her to kneel; then taken her by the hair to force her face into the pointy and bubbly mess, but she yanked away from me in time, that fur-trimmed sleeve tearing off in my grip. As bezoomny as she made me, the sight of her ripped fancy fur coat made me feel even more inspired than I'd been when I first goolied into the party. The idea of her with no platties on ran through my rasoodock once more, only this time, I could viddy her nice and clear as though on a sinny screen, screaming and twisting under me as I made her taste the nozh I hid in my neezhnies. Her malenky flower ripped in half for all to hear, and under her I saw a ribbon of blood appear as the two of us moved as one. Right then and there, I knew finally what I had to do, and what I could get the rest of my droogs to do so they could have as much fun as I did.

"Oh-oh-oh, little Miss Lydia. Just look what I done. I went and ruined your nice, fine furs, didn't I?"

She crouched there in front of me in silence, her rookers curling into fisties and back again. If she was afraid of me now, she'd only get all the more poogly later.

"Now how's a nice devotchka like you supposed to enjoy herself looking like that? It's downright indecent, it is. A man should know better than to ruin a nice coat like you got, right?"

I slipped my nozh back into my carman, a repentant grin sneaking across my litso.

"Pardon us for our bad little show of temper, little Miss…"

I turned to wink at my droogies and then turned back again, managing a small bow after doing so.

"…I just have a big, big problem with them that looks at me funny and thinks I'm about as welcome as filth on their shoes. My lot in life from the school-age and onward, y' see. You know what I mean, about getting pushed around in school and all that?"

The look in her glazzies still promised she didn't trust a single slovo coming out of my rot, but at least she'd been brave enough to sit up a little straighter, and then quietly nod in agreement. Leave it to her to accept my tragic bad boy routine and fall for it without a second thought. She was always too trusting, even up 'till her very end.

"I've had an idea just now, little Miss. What say me and my friends here take you back to your flat and see that you can get yourself a better coat from home? What say you to that?"

I watched her drag herself over to a banister by the stairs; then pull herself up so that she could look at me all level and even-stevens. We'd be equals for a while, at least until me and mine thought to do otherwise.

"Do you promise to leave the rest of my guests alone?"

"Every single one of your guests all by themselves, ah yes, of course."

"And you won't try to hurt them as we're leaving?"

"Oh, not _them_, Missie, surely."

"Or hurt me before we get there?"

"Cross my heart and hope to snuff it."

"All right. Ten minutes, and then we come back here, no questions asked. Deal?"


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: For PandaLove's continuing devotion to this fic, a character in an upcoming chapter is going to have a panda backpack. ;) Consider this a token of my gratitude for two comments straight. Anywho…off to the next chapter!

**Three**

A nod from me and a handshake from her, and the little idiot sealed her own fate.

The crowd around her went back to their smecking and govoreeting, but not without like sending little scared looks at me and mine on our way out. I paid them no further mind, of course, for there were more important things to worry about then what those lewdies had on their rasoodocks.

As for Lydia, she kept up her tough girl act as we headed off, me leading the way with one hand on her arm lest she fell down again and my other five malchicks trailing along behind us. I was like the perfect gentleman, too, pushing the rusty gate doors open for her and warning her if there were snowdrifts ahead. When we reached the intersection and Lydia made to turn right, however, I tightened my grip on her to steer her left.

"We're going the wrong way."

"Call it a shortcut, Missie."

"Shortcut to where? The right way's behind us."

She turned around and tried going back the way we came, but my grip and my droogs told her she wasn't going anywhere, for they'd formed a straight line in front of her to block her progress. Guess the poor girl would have to endure all of us for just a malenky bit longer.

"Let me go."

Her goloss might have been soft and firm at the same time, but I could viddy a look of like fear and trembling in her glazzies.

"How come, how come? The streets are very dangerous this time of night, my lovely."

"Look, my flat's that other way, we shouldn't keep going this way or we'll get lost. Could we turn around, please?" 

"You're already lost," I snapped, shoving her around and tearing the rest of her sleeve off. "Oh, dear dear dear, did I do that?"

"_Stop_."

She was like breathing harder now, and I could tell how much she wanted me to leave her be, but she only made me hard instead of softening me up like she'd hoped.

"'_Stop_,' she says," I smecked out loud, taking her other sleeve and yanking it hard enough to rip it as well. "'Turn _around_,' she says. 'We're going the wrong way,' she says. Little Miss _Perfect_, giving Mr. Poor, Stupid _Bastard_ orders!"

"_Please_!" 

"_Shut yer rot_!"

I gave that soomka a good push backwards, and she fell right into Leo's and Charlie's waiting arms, who then wasted no time in pulling the rest of her coat off and tossing it into a mud puddle. Toby had some fun with her not long afterward, like ripping out her fancy hair ornament, tossing it to the ground, and giving her groodies a rough squeeze.

"You _promised_ me…you promised…"

"_Wrong_!"

I grabbed a rookerful of her hair and yanked until I pulled her litso close to mine.

"One, I did promise to leave your guests alone, but I said not a slovo to do the same to you. Second, I did promise not to hurt 'em, but I said nothing about tolchocking you down, Missie. And thirdly, we didn't raise a rooker against you on our way out here, but we made no guarantees about _afterwards_!"

There was the starry casino ahead of us, the dead dead ruin that still had a stage attached to it 'cause it got built originally as a music hall. That'll be the perfect spot to give this devotchka a bit of justice. She got quoted as wanting to be an actress someday, what better place to start than on the stage?

"Bring her. I got a surprise waiting there, and you're all invited."

That was my signal that some twenty-to-one was ahead, and my droogs were all too happy to follow my orders. I let go of Lydia's hair one moment and stuffed a new stick of Blammo into my rot the next, as the old one lost its flavor and was of no use to me no more. In the meantime, Toby rushed to open the old theater/casino doors to let the rest of the gang-plus-Lydia through, with Leo and Charlie pinning her arms back and Nick and Joel keeping her legs still so she couldn't itty off. Looks like I picked a good time to show up, as there were neither any millicents on the corner nor no unwelcome lewdies wandering around for a curious little peek.

I could feel myself stiffen up for the big plunge as they forced Lydia to enter stage right, her sabogs already left behind in the snow and her platties torn off one piece at a time. My old dream and my new revenge of having her were about to come true, and so, I started humming 'The Immigrant Song' to prepare my plott and my rasoodock for when I joined her on that mattress where she waited for me now.

Only one little veshch could have stopped me from taking what was rightfully mine, and that one thing suddenly boomed loud and clear from the shadows:

"Ho, ho, _ho_…well, if it isn't fat _stinking_ Billygoat Billyboy in _poison_!"

Any messels of Lydia burned away in a flash, and the memory of the first time someone made fun of my eemya got yanked up to the forefront. I forced a grin as I viddied them standing there, as I viddied _him_ mocking me in front of everyone.

"How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap _stinking_ chip-oil?"

I went on grinning and chewing my bit of Blammo, but not without remembering someone who threw hot oil in my litso after I said that Led Zeppelin played ten times better than any other artist, alive or dead.

"Come and get one in the yarbles, if you _have_ any yarbles, you eunuch-jelly, thou!"

One more memory burned in and out of my mind, and that was of the person from my corrective school daring me to fight him in the yard, only to send me to the hospital wing after carving the word 'Eunuch' into my left arm. He was the same person who threw the oil in my face, the same person who smecked at my name, and the same person mocking and insulting everything about me right down there. The wanderer in white. The baddiwad Charlie Chaplin wannabe. Him. 

_Alex Burgess._

He called himself 'The Large' or 'DeLarge' to be really fancy, but right now, there was nothing large about him to me. He was nothing but one malenky fly that needed to be squashed, and Lydia be damned, all of his big big talk told me that I would be the one to do that squashing. He could govoreet all he wanted, but the truth was that it took a lot more than a few naughty slovos to prove who had the yarbles around here. In this windy old ruin, I was gonna prove to 'em all that and then some, and then I would be the one to do the smecking and the teasing and all that cal.

And so, I snuck around my teeth until I found my Blammo and spat it out; then I flicked the switch and flashed my nozh for all to see.

"Let's get 'em, boys!"

We were down on 'em like vultures to the kill, like cheering and shouting and ready to tolchock 'em senseless…then we started to fall one by one. Not only did they use their own weapons against us, they had all that was lying around this ruined building and they didn't hesitate to use that, too. Boards, chairs, tables, bottles…it was like the whole damned junkyard was in on it!

_Argh, don't just stand there staring at them, Leo!_ I thought. _Get up off your arse and do something, Nick!_

_Finally you're thinking, Charlie, now finish that fat idiot off, damn you! _

_All right, yes, you're very fast, now stop running and bleed like a veck—_

I slipped. How could I slip now?

_How could you fall like that, Joel? How could any of you let them hurt you like that? Can't you do something right?_

_They knew._

They knew we were going to be here somehow. They knew, and they juiced themselves up for it while we were off fighting someplace else. How else could they go on tossing us through the walls and the windows like this? How would they?

_Even that crazy little brat with 'em had some! He distracted me again, and that mouthy bratchny got me from behind! They all got us from behind!_

They all got us…

I couldn't move any more. I wanted to take that little shit's stick and beat him over the gulliver with it, but he was already doing that to me again and again and again and _again and again_. It's not fair!

_It's not fair…_

"The police! Come on, let's go!"

Sirens, shadows, and pain were the only veshches on my mind now…then there was nothing but shadows, and finally, nothing.

_Nothing at all…_


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** In response to a friendly note from a friendly commenter…I'm not sure I can promise you dozens of chapters…but at least I'll try to keep this up until all of your questions are answered. Until that time comes…let me keep you guessing with this latest chapter. ;) Lots of lurve, Weasley.

And now, for my next trick…

**Four**

I woke up in absolute agony, and lo and behold, there were the trademark red and blue lights going flash-flash-flash to tell me that the rozzes were there. One of 'em shined a little white light into my glazzies, and the moment I flinched was the same moment he got a smeck out of my flinching. _Horrorshow_.

"Looks like someone did a number on you, didn't they?" he snickered.

"Nearly," I answered him back, but not without like thinking to myself, _Come down here and I'll do a number on you, skitebird._

"Well, guess that will teach you to go around hurting sweet, innocent young ladies, won't it?"

My rasoodock snapped back to Lydia, and I felt like screaming bloody murder right then and there. Of course _she'd_ go shrieking to the rozzes after I very nearly pulled off some twenty-to-one against her, only to be so rudely distracted by _them_. Suddenly, it all made sense to me on just how we wound up to be not as alone as we wished. She could have read up on my nightly exploits long before she ever saw me, and so helped to make a case against me and mine. For all I knew, she had also ratted me out to that great white wannabe wanderer as well, thus letting her platties get ripped off just so he had an excuse to attack me later. Hell and damnation of a note. That would teach me, all right, but only to start making sure I threatened my victims with slow and painful death from now on so that they wouldn't ever tell on me again.

"Going to a costume party for the second world war, too, are you? Well, you got the end part right, at least. Your kind got horribly beaten and defeated, our ladies were protected, and our boys returned home safe and sound."

_Your boys,_ I thought, rolling my glazzies and concentrating on the high ceiling above me. Of course this one would take their side. It had been burned into everyone's mind for about a century that anyone who wore a German uniform or who govoreeted with a German accent would always have to be the baddiwad. What other side would anyone on this island take, especially when the alternatives were the 'harmless' little Charlie Chaplin copycats?

Moreover, how stupid was it that he thought Lydia needed like protecting in the first place? She'd already made herself infamous when she messed around with those two malchicks, and so got on the wrong side of the papers. What, then, could have possibly stopped her from fillying about with some new veck behind the scenes? She could have known that little bastard long before she ever laid her glazzies on my grinning, smecking litso. For all I knew, she could have also pitted her two boyfriends against each other on purpose so she'd be free to go do the old in-out with him. Even more hell and damnation, all right, but I couldn't have let it get to me. Oh, no no _no_. I wouldn't let it get to me just yet. _I might be beaten, Mr. Rozz_, I thought, _but I'm by no means defeated_. His so-called 'lady' wouldn't be so safe, either, not once I got up off this floor and back onto my nogas. And if I ever viddied his 'boys' again, it was gonna be their funeral.

His light blinded me in the meantime; yet I went on staring back at him anyway, even if only to get a good look at his face. If I ever got back on my feet again, his would be the first litso I pound into the cold, hard pavement.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"One," I told him, flipping two of my own fingers back at him in a mean gesture. "How many have I got up, eh?"

"Hardy-har-har," the rozz said sarcastically, motioning to someone out of my line of sight. "All right, boys, bring that stretcher over."

_Stretcher?_

"Coming right up!"

Ooh, look, a few vecks from the ambulance, I thought to myself, feeling a snarl coming on. Was I supposed to feel relieved or worried that they were about to cart me away? I was a little too much in pain to feel anything else, unfortunately, and so just remained silent as they arrived.

"Ugly-looking little bastard, ain't he, Jack?"

_Be glad you're only half right, Mister Ambulance Veck,_ I thought to myself. _Otherwise, I might decide to make sure you looked as bad as I do._

"You'd look bad, too, if you got beaten unconscious."

_Bravo, bravo, encore, encore. Could these vecks act as well as they sympathized, or were they just bored with their jobs?_

"Now…stop joking around and give me a hand, will you?"

_I'd give you two hands and fisties besides, if I wasn't lying in my own pain, that is. Be thankful._

"All right…"

The rozz's light had been taken away a while ago, but no sooner did I get used to the darkness again that a second light shined into my glazzies. Would this obsession with flashlights never stop?

"…Name?"

_William 'Billyboy' Antonelli, Kaiser of the East End, Master and Commander of the London Blitz, son of a whore, brother of bastards, nephew to the wolves, cousin to the hyenas, and the big big curse of devotchkas everywhere._

That was what I wanted to say, if only to scare both of those ambulance vecks out of their rasoodocks. Instead, I just mumbled "Antonelli", and left it at that.

"All right, Mr. Antonelli, I'm gonna ask you a few questions."

"Ask away, sir."

"What were you up to before we found you?"

I would have been up to teaching a few lessons, if one of 'em hadn't ratted me out and the other hadn't tolchocked me out.

"Defending my honor, sir."

"Oh? And what's so honorable about breaking into this old casino just so's you can rape a harmless little girl?" 

"That weren't no harmless ptitsa, sir," I growled, feeling my rookers ball up into fisties.

"She ratted me out, she did! It's her and that Alex Burgess, sir, they're in it together!"

"Alex Burgess?"

"Yes, sir, I swear to Bog it's all them, sir!"

If I was going to give them answers, at least I would do it in a way that made me look like Lazarus and him like the greedy rich man. As for little Miss Lydia, I would speak of her as though she were no less kind than Jezebel herself.

"Along she came, acting all big and self-important, looking down her nose at me and my gang, and of course she knew it would make me all bezoomny and like ready to tear her platties, sir! All I wanted was to make her respect me and mine a bit, sir, but then he showed up, and bang bang _bang_, him and his droogs almost broke our skulls, sir! She lured me into it hook, line, and sinker, she did!"

"He almost broke your skulls?"

"Oh yes, sir, and a _frightful_ pain it is too, sir! I swear I've got a terrible headache right now just talking to you, sir, unfortunate as it sounds. All that wood and glass and other stuff lying around, sir, it's bad to do a poor malchick like me a serious injury!"

"Wood and glass…indeed. It's a miracle none of you had any broken bones when we found you, boyo. Your friends should make a full recovery in the hospital, thank God."

"Hospital? You mean they're already there, sir? All five of 'em?"

"I should say so, and with minor injuries as well, although we'll check them out for concussions just the same. A person can't be too careful on the streets these days, can they?"

He went on to ask me if I felt sick to my stomach, had trouble seeing straight, and if I could try walking a bit; to which I said no, no, and then tried a few steps only to almost fall off balance. That filthy skitebird Alex had hit me harder than I thought, and for that, I would have to get wheeled into the back of the last ambulance. I was on my way to the hospital to join my other droogs, and no thanks to _them_, we'd be staying there much longer than we'd ever hoped.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note**: If someone were to gather up all the droog gangs and put them under psychological evaluations, how many would be classified as psychopaths…? I wonder, how I wonder…

(ahem)

Five chapters, thirty-nine visitors, and sixty-five hits…wow. Just…WOW. I'm very grateful to everyone who's been taking the time to read this. Even though I've gotten feedback from only one reader, it's still good to see the numbers on each chapter when I log in every day, so…again, my thanks to all of you. Here's another chapter for your reading pleasure.

==Weasley==

**Five**

Twelve AM. Midnight. The first hour of morning, and yet it was still pitch-black outside. There was not a star or a Luna to be viddied up here, no thanks to the damn tinted hospital windows blocking out what was left of the night's lights. All I was glad about was at least this room was rather dark, too. All the better to reflect my current mood, I say. 

They had put me under a watch for a concussion up here, and so I was not allowed to gooly around or even turn my gulliver real skorry without the supervision of a doctor or nurse, and all because of what that bratchny did to me. I had also been blessed with a cast on my left arm and a matching one on my right leg, thus making writing and standing nearly impossible without someone else's help. Those were also gifts from him and his silly little gruppa, and for that I could be in these bandages for up to six weeks, completely at the mercy of others. It was a wonder he didn't use that gloopy britva and slit my throat. On the other hand, perhaps he should have done just that to keep me and mine from coming after him later on. As soon as I was fully healed and not bandaged no more, I would go gather up my malchicks and then pay him a surprise visit right as he was about to march through the doors of his flatblock. He would be fashed and he wouldn't have the luck of that juice to save his skin, and so he would be easy prey for what had been coming to him ever since he opened his rot to taunt me.

I might have been feeling a bit shagged and fagged myself, but I couldn't let myself itty off into the big big dreamland just yet. I had too many messels rattling around my rasoodock for that. Instead, I had to figure out what to do with the rest of 'em, because after we had taken care of that bratchny Alex, all six of us might have to pick off the others one by one. _Them_, and that stupid malenky tattletale I once called Lydia. It was more than obvious to me that they were all in this one together, and so, if they wanted to plot and plan and drat me as one little gang, then they would platch and scream together as one little gang, just like all five of 'em wanted. The problem was, how would I manage to get them all alone one by one, since there was always that chance the other three could step in on me if I ever tried ittying after Lydia again?

_Hey, Billygoat, want a bite of this mud pie?_

I would have to leave Lydia on her oddy-knocky until I had taken care of Alex and his gang first and foremost. I couldn't risk another surprise visit like the one I got in the casino a short time ago. I would have to deal with 'em before I could deal with her, because there was no telling if and when they could catch me and mine and tolchock us senseless all over again.

_Hi there, Wee Willie Weasel, how's your Mummy-The-Monkey?_

I already had a horrorshow idea on how to deal with _him_. I just had to come up with an idea on which of 'em I should go after next. There was that bolshy idiot with the sweet tooth, that complainer who was obsessed with treasure, and that mute crazie who still played with teddy bears. I would have to figure out which one of 'em always did the most damage and push 'em to the bottom of my list, and then find the one who did the least so that I could continue my rampage of revenge with 'em at the top right after that Alex.

_Ick, ick, stay away from me, you!_

That little brat in the cap was definitely gonna be the second one to go. I was literally one step away from taking him out before his gloopy little leader got me from behind. I would make sure we got him right after Alex was taken care of, and maybe even when he had his back turned. What better way to pay the teddy-loving nutter back for distracting me and giving me this head trouble?

The third person might give us a bit of trouble, though. He might be silent most of the time except when he complained about this veshch or that veshch, and he might not exactly be the hardest veck on the streets, but Bog curse it all, he sure was fast. Whatever he had been peeting as of late, we would have to get our rookers on it somehow. Maybe we could pretend to treat him to some of that special juice only to spike it with a drug that would slow him down instead of making him want to speed it up.

Once we took care of those three first, that would be the time in which everything got interesting for me and mine. It was the biggest and the dimmest that got my attention, and so I might have a rasoodock to keep that one around for just a malenky bit longer. He was a lot taller and a lot heavier than the other three, which could make a malchick wonder just why on earth he decided to hang around 'em at all. He had also gotten a different weapon than the rest of 'em did. That had my rasoodock going, now—why would someone like him go around carrying an oozy when the rest of his own droogs all had nozhes or britvas to get the rabbit done? He could have gone with a thousand weapons all made for slicing and dicing, and yet he went with the one hard, blunt object that left mostly pain and bruises behind instead of big bloody cuts. Wasn't that odd, now? Why did he have that one, I wonder?

I could have probably gone to get my droogs and tolchock the truth out of him if I wanted to. I had viddied some of the stuff that Statefilm dishes out, and according to some of their specials, the smaller ants could take down the larger bugs merely by surrounding and overwhelming them. What better way to make that idiot talk and tell us everything he knows than for us to do the same?

On the other hand, how dobby would I be in a drat if and when I ever get out of this hospital room and back onto the streets where I belonged? They all got juiced up before they came to meet us, and so beat us down without half trying. They must have also ittied someplace special to get that juice. What was that starry place I wandered off to before my voice got deeper and the rest of me got taller? I couldn't remember its eemya. It had been close to six years, and I forgot the gloopy name now, ha-ha-ha. I must have gotten tolchocked harder than I thought; else I could have at least remembered what type of juice they served there. For all I know, it could have been arsenic in the old ice water. Did they even make arsenic any more?

_Don't look so sad, Billy, it was just snow. Why don't you wash your dirty hair with it like this? Ha ha ha!_

_Eugh! Don't touch me, your hands have grease on 'em!_

This was just like with all those bullies from the old skolliwoll. Back then, they bothered me nearly every day until one day, I got bigger, meaner, and started carrying a cricket bat along with me on the playground. Back then, I learned to be tough so that they'd leave me alone, and after that I found my gang, and after that I let a lot of other gangs know how bad it was to be on the receiving end of such bullying as I'd got. Now I was back to square Odin, and I had to work out my revenge, beat those other droogs down, and be the one smecking as I did it.

_Bog in Heaven, this cast itches. Too bad I can't take the damn thing off of my arm and scratch to give myself some relief._

And when I took them down, ha ha ha…when I did that, that meant Miss Perfect Lydia wouldn't have any of her nights in shoomy bright harmer showing up at the worst possible time. She was going to pay dearly for putting in her lot with 'DeLarge', oh, yes. Once I had done the necessary damage to them and made sure they didn't get in my way ever again, that's when I would track her down, show her the sharp part of my switchblade, and after that…well, let's say after I had taken my turn with her and handed her off to my five other droogs, I would go one more round with her and give the little snitch something to remember me by. That would teach her to think twice before messing around with me, and then she would pony how the next time would mean her death. After that, the streets would be mine, and everything that went with 'em. After that, I would have something to show off to the other droog gangs, and also warn 'em of what would happen if they dared go the same way as Alex.

The only question that remained for me was this—once they let me out, because they _would_, might I hang around at home and wait for 'em to show up again, or should I itty out and find 'em, and then take 'em out one by one as I thought and wished? 

I didn't think I could sit in front of my Tee-Vee and just wait like a couch potato. That could mean I would miss their coming and going until it was too late, and so they could be long gone from anywhere or anyplace before I came there to join them. That could also mean I never crossed paths with Lydia again, and just when I really wanted to, she could wind up in France or Spain or some other mesto too far out of my reach. Guess that meant only one veshch after all—the moment I was back home and fully healed, the same moment I would start giving 'em what's been coming ever since tonight. I wouldn't get hurt again, either, because this time, I would be on the same juice as they were, and all my droogs besides. This time it would be even Stevens, and then they would _all_ wish they never smecked, taunted, or plotted against me at all.

One by one, all the messels faded into silence, and one by one, I felt my rasoodock finally clear up as the minutes ticked by. Time to wander off into the big big dreamland at last, I think.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** WOWWEE. Two comments on my most recent chapter? I'm flattered. My thanks to the nice people that made it possible for me, Dan Sickles and PandaLove01. Now, if only Pete could get as much love as Billyboy did…(sigh)

Anywho, here's the next chapter, y'all. Hope you like it.

**Six**

I was not one to do a lot of dreaming at nochy, but when I did, sometimes I got the same one about three or four times a month. I was like looking for someone in a red hallway, and all I had to do to find 'em was run through this white door at the very end. Something in that dream always made me think my Pee waited behind that white door, but nine times out of ten, I ended up turning around and going back the way I came until that white door appeared again. Occasionally when I did go through the door, I didn't viddy a damn thing except darkness, and then that was when I woke up. Funny starry world, isn't it?

I guess I wouldn't know the old man even if he stood right in front of me. Maybe it was just as well I didn't ever find out; otherwise I might be tempted to give him the tolchocking of his jeezny.

Anyways…

The moment I opened my glazzies, I got an unwelcome beam of sunshine fried right into my rasoodock. That window, it turned out, was only dark when it was dark outside. Otherwise, it blocked out just a malenky bit of the light, while the rest came in and like tolchocked me smack between the glazzies with a vengeance. How long was I out for, anyway? Six hours? Seven? Didn't matter. One whiff of the old black orchid scent, and I knew that I was not on my oddy-knocky in this room no more. Looks like Em just came in to join me.

"All right. How many people did you make cry _this_ time, Billy boy?"

She was not alone, either, not by a long shot. Not only had she got a gazetta in one rooker, she also had Little Sister Meggie waiting by the other, her panda backpack left for a time on the floor. Liam was nowhere in sight, though, probably because he got dropped off at the old day-care already. Oh well, I would viddy that one later tonight, after Em put in another shift at the restaurant and maybe before some vecks showed up at the door of our flat. Until then, it was time for us to have a little chat.

"Who says I didn't do the crying instead, Em?"

Even through this bad sunlight, I viddied her glance towards my broken arm and broken leg, frowning all the while. It was always hard for her to get bezoomny at me when I wound up hurt or sick, and today might be another of those lucky days for me.

"There was a story in the paper today," she went on, trying to ignore the sight of me all beat up for a moment.

"There was a story about four boys leaving a movie theater late last night, only to get horribly attacked by four others. Two of them were dead by the time the ambulance arrived, the third died en route to the hospital, and the fourth, well…they're still looking for him."

I got one of her famous Looks right then and there, almost as though she like dared me to confess that I had my rookers all over that attack. I just gave her one of my own right back, raising both my eyebrows as though to ask her, "What have you been smoking, and where can I get some?" That threw her off the scent, at least as far as that massacre at the movies was concerned. By the other look still on her litso, the quiet questioning look that demanded the right answers, I had a long ways to go before we were finished here.

"There was another story I read today, one a little bit worse than that. Someone lied his way into the home of a writer and his wife; then proceeded to beat one and rape the other, all while singing and dancing around like some Broadway star from hell. And once he'd finished having his way with the poor wife, he made his three friends join in, too."

Another Look, and then:

"I don't suppose you've taken either of those up as your new hobby, have you?"

"If I ever get to be that artistic, Em, you'll be the first to know," I snapped at her, silently amazed that she'd ever think I could get so creative with my nightly pursuits. If she'd checked with some other family besides her own, maybe she would have actually found out the real malchick that did all of that. She had two down out of three, though, and she was probably one step away from the truth no thanks to her little 'news stories'.

"All right…what about luring a young lady to a theater, and then trying to assault her six at a time? Am I to assume you had nothing to do with that, either?"

_To lie outright, or to like govoreet brutal honesty? That is the question…_

"There are thousands of young ladies on this island, Em. Which of 'em would you be referring to, if I could be so brazen?" 

"A model and future actress, maybe?"

"Hmm, there might have been one…maybe just one, I'm sure. What was I supposed to have done to her, again?"

_If at first you don't break free, lie, lie again._ Too bad Em was not in the mood for eegras no more; I could have had some fun with this today.

"Lydia Walker's her name, Billy, and she's about to press charges," she told me, helping Meggie crawl onto her lap. "She's been scared to death since last night, she has. She also thinks she's found some magical person dressed in white, and that he swooped in to save her life at just the right minute."

Oh, didn't she _wish_? Would he save her before or after he held her down, sang her favorite show tune just to torture her, shived her platties off, and like succeeded where I failed?

"Saved, or _marked_ for his own sloppy seconds?"

"What do you mean?"

There was more than one way out of a trap, and I knew just how to find it.

"Hey, Meggie, come here to Big Brother a moment."

Little Sister scrambled away from Em and her panda bag and straight to me on the spot, shoving her litso against my uninjured arm as I pulled her to my side.

"You hear a lot of stories at the old skolliwoll, don't you?" 

I waited for her nod of agreement, and then I went on with my little interview.

"You hear plenty about that Alex from the malchicks, I bet?"

Another nod and a sniffle; then I finally pressed the issue.

"And…does that Alex have any special agreements with anybody? Anybody you might know, maybe?"

She glanced over at Em, back to me, and at last mumbled a few slovos of her own.

"Max Masters says…he says there's a deal between you and Alex." 

"Oh, really? What sort of deal might that be, little sister?"

"He says…he told me one of you had to win three times in a fight."

"A fight between our two bandas, you mean?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good, good…and what happens to the winner? Go on, Megs, don't be shy."

"Um…they get the whole city to themselves?"

It had been two wins for him so far, and two losses for me and mine. One more, and we would all be his indentured servants as far as Alex was concerned.

"They do? Interesting, Megs, very interesting. What do the losers have to do?"

"Give everything up to the winners."

"Including what?"

"Including all the…all the big girls they find wandering around alone."

"All the big girls they find wandering around, alone," I repeated for Em's sake. "There you are, Em, Lydia's little hero doesn't love her as much as she wants him to. Who's the troublemaker now?"

"Are you telling me that this Alex, whomever he is, barged in on you on purpose just for the sake of interrupting your…your stupid fun and games last night?"

"Not at all, Em. I'm telling you that it's my gang against his, and that whomever wins after three fights gets his pick of the streets, and…"

There was one veshch I had kept in my carman until now, which was a shining gold watch worth a big big amount of pretty polly. I merely had to flash it once before Em's glazzies for her to get the idea. If I won the next bitva between my gruppa and his, then we would have a chance to start over and win the other two, and then _he_ would have to serve _me_ instead of the other way around. That was worth a thousand would-be concussions and broken limbs in my opinion, and I wanted nothing more than to make Em believe just that, too.

"…You think on that a while, Em. You think on that the next time some pushy person wants their money back because their drinks don't have enough ice."

A malenky bit of silence passed between us, and then there was a loud knock on my hospital room door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:**Well well well well well well well, if it isn't LetitbeXO!How are you, you most excellent writer of remorse and redemption? *ahem*

If a person can't tell it by looking at this fic section, I'd say we're growing! Hooray! And I've got a new commenter too, woot woot! It's all uphill from here, I hope! Here's another chapter for you guys so that I can keep the ball rolling!

-Weasley—

P.S.: I deliberately cite "A Man's Gotta Do What A Man's Gotta Do" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and "Star Wars" as inspiration for this chapter. Read the whole thing, and you'll find out why. ;)

**Seven**

Em and Meggie conveniently decided to itty off just as soon as an orderly walked in; a breakfast tray in hand and a blank look on his litso. While one of 'em went to her skolliwoll and the other went to her rabbit, I would be at the mercy of a hundred or so human ants in white uniforms, like moving here and there in tunnels all throughout this hive of a hospital. Ah, well. Until they stopped worrying over my poor, bruised rasoodock, I would have to make the most of my stay. So, while the orderly rearranged my bed so that the tray would have something hard to rest on, I did my best to be social.

"Morning, mister," I said, using my best weak and pouty goloss. "Nice day, innit?"

"Nice and cold," Mr. Orderly sighed, slipping a fork into my uninjured rooker so that I might properly enjoy my eggiwegs. "Puts a chill in the bones, it does. D'you think you'll need the heater on?"

"Not today, sir. I'm all right as I am."

"Good. You'd have to be really foolish or really daring not to bundle up before sunrise. Some fool easily could—"

His blank litso switched over to shock and aw-w-w the moment he got a good, long look at my choice of uniform. He probably had good reason for that, too, because I hadn't changed out of my crossed iron or my old German platties yet. For all he knew, I could have been some nutcase who took historical re-enactments a malenky bit too seriously.

"Like 'em, sir? I searched hard and long to put this all together. What do you think?"

Mr. Orderly wasn't sure what he thought, unfortunately, because the only slovo he could spit out was, "Why?"

"Why this Panzer of a costume? I'll tell you. Just be sure you take a seat first, so you don't pass out."

He did so with no complaints, and so I couldn't complain about starting my history lesson as skorry as I wished.

"All right, where to begin? Ah, I know. My old granddad was a bastard boy…not unlike myself, I should say. He didn't have no money; no class, no social standing, not many possessions, and practically no name save for the one he got from his Em. One day in springtime, he got shipped out of Berlin with a handful of other guest workers, and coincidentally, all of 'em weren't just German, they were also all blond and pale-eyed and suchlike.

So, as soon as they reached this shore and started adding new buildings to this city here, that little coincidence got caught on tape and, later on, all of 'em got put into a mosaic for history's sake. Sure, later on a bunch of boys tried painting stuff over the top of 'em, and a lot more people tried ignoring 'em to say that the modern England got built by the modern English, but that mosaic's still lying around someplace to prove 'em all wrong. So…anybody who sees that mosaic gets properly reminded, and anybody who can't has me to do the same. They can claim anything they want about this city, but in the end, it was all rebuilt by German hands."

One look at Mr. Orderly, and I could tell I got him properly awed this time, because no doubt he expected me to be some gloopy malchickiwick who couldn't tell his left rooker from his right, let alone anything he read in those starry history books. I was never one to give a lewdie what they expected, though, so I would be too pleased to watch him grapple with everything I had in my rasoodock for a while. Guess that wanderer in white wasn't the only smart one here, now, was he?

"How did you know all that?" he asked me in this like amazed and inspired goloss, completely off his guard.

"I snuck around the library once or twice at school," I answered him, but not without an innocent malenky grin and a shrug. "Some words stayed with me more than others, I guess."

"Aye…perhaps they did, now. Yes, I see that. Hmmm…"

There must have been an odd messel or two that popped into his gulliver as we spoke, because he changed the subject real skorry right then and there.

"…Is there anything else I can get for you while I'm here? Some extra pillows or a bit of T.V., maybe?"

"Well…now that you mention it, maybe you could nudge me closer to that window over there," I began, flashing him another innocent grin of mine. "Think you can pull that off?"

I was by the window within minutes, free to peer through the dark glass with my spare set of binoculars and eat my eggiwegs up one forkful at a time. Lewdie-watching wasn't something I did unless I felt bored out my rasoodock, and today must have been one of those days, because I spent a malenky bit of time smecking and like watching various passersby and business folks going here and there from their buildings as birds from their nests. Even though I had to switch between those binoculars and my fork every three minootas or so, I was still having a fairly okay time at it. In fact, around the time of my third or fourth switch, I happened to viddy a stray devotchka all in purple skipping up the sidewalk towards the nearest available candy store.

"Well, well, what have we here?"

I got a little smeck out of watching her go in that store, and about one minoota later, out she came with one rainbow lolly for herself and another for her best droogie, who happened to be dressed all in white. A few hours after sunrise, and here they were conveniently absent from skolliwoll.

"How very curious…"

I forgot all about my eggiwegs right then and there, and instead amused myself by watching them giggle and chatter as they walked towards a pop-disk bootick across the street. I had to admit, that devotchka in purple had caught my glazzie, and she wasn't about to give it up anytime soon. She didn't have too much of the old cosmetics on, she seemed a bit pale like yours truly, and to top it off, I knew a fellow rule breaker when I saw her. If I hadn't been stuck in that gloopy hospital bed, I would have been down there on the sidewalk with her, and so like convinced her to leave that other devotchka in white all on her oddy-knocky while we sought out our entertainment elsewhere. That being said, I felt a malenky bit sad when I watched them both disappear into that shop, because I would most likely have to wait a while before I got to viddy them come back again.

However, that was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw_ him_ walking up the sidewalk, strutting around with his malenky walking-stick as though he owned the whole island.

"Oh, _horrorshow_."

Alex had shown up once again as though by some hidden instinct or magical spell, and to top that off, he'd conveniently dressed up in purple and white for the occasion, too. My one messel about spiriting that devotchka in purple off someplace else had changed, for now I wished I could fly straight out of this window and swoop down on him like a hawk, only to rip the little skitebird apart with my bare rookers and have Miss Purple _and_ Miss Whitey all to myself. My wishes didn't come true, of course, and so I was left trying to make my own magic so that he wouldn't ruin my fun for the morning.

"Hey, you. Yeah, you with that britva. This isn't the bootick you're looking for."

I waved my rooker over the viewfinder to try and make my messels go in his direction; only to viddy him go straight through the same doors that those devotchkas had used a moment before.

"Tough Nadsat, are you? All right…you do not desire those teenyboppers. You just want to get your gloopy dead composers' records and be done with it…come on, just kupet the veshches you need and itty out of there…"

He got what he needed, all right. No sooner did I finish like trying to do my magic than out _he_ came and out they came, all three of 'em smecking and flirting like they'd known each other for ages. I wanted to put those damn binoculars down before it got too ugly, but some part of me still held out hope that at least Miss Purple would give him a hard slap across the litso, kick him where it really would hurt, and finally steal his gloopy stick as her trophy for saving her droogie from the skitebird that he was.

"You've got to be joking, little sister…kick him into the street like a dobby little ptitsa! Come on, already…"

If only I'd been _that_ lucky to viddy all that, and then some. Instead, I had to watch him hail a taxi for 'em, and then spirit 'em off to his flat for his own brand of entertainment. There was nothing left but me and my eggiwegs, because now I had to watch 'em ride off into the distance and not viddy either of those devotchkas no more.

"…_Yarbles_."


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** My gratitude to my two partners-in-drooginess, PandaLove and LetItBeXO. It's so much fun that two of us can write together now, and that two of us can comment on fics together. I definitely couldn't have done this without you, so…thanks again!

And now, for my next trick…

**Eight**

By twelve o'clock noon, I knew that I wanted out of that hospital right away, and also that I wanted no further part of like lying on my back or itching at my bandaged arm and leg. I wanted to walk and run and tolchock some gloopy malchicks down with my bare rookers again, and maybe also a few gloopy devotchkas, but these casts would have held me back either way.

There was no radosty, either, from staying as still as I possibly could so as not to further damage my poor, bruised rasoodock. I wanted much more to turn my gulliver, shake it around, and give my neck a good workout, but the dangers of a broken skull had made that impossible. Impossible, too, was the idea that I could just pull myself up, jump out of the window, and fly home on the wind as though I'd never been hurt at all.

I had to sit up and watch the television in one corner with support, but try nothing that could be considered dangerous without some member of the hospital staff viddying my every move. The same went for mounching and sleeping, and likewise with visiting the old vay-say. How quickly I had gone from the second-most feared malchick on the streets to a helpless, bandaged bug under glass!

Seven days, they had told me originally, and yet I felt as though I would not last seven hours today, let alone seven more minootas. What was there for me to do in that cubie, just lie quietly and watch the television, and so give myself up to seeing pretty pictures whilst unable to move a single finger? This would not do at all. This _could_ not do. I would have to be able to like govoreet to someone in the meantime, or else I might snuff it out of sheer boredom down here.

And so, for that reason, I could not help but glance over at the malenky red sign labeled 'Help', along with the pull-me string just below it. That would have been meant to alert my doctors and nurses that I'd had a great fall, and so needed their attention again real skorry. That would have also been meant to tell 'em if my ventilator or other breathing-machine had been disturbed somehow, and then they would have had to come back into my room and fix it for me before the damn veshch suffocated my rasoodock beyond all repairs.

What it was not meant for, some veck told me, was bothering the hospital staff for laughs and lashings. It would keep 'em away from the patients who _really_ needed help, they said, and so desensitize 'em towards me if a real emergency were to happen. If I were to filly about with it, they reasoned, they would not come to my aid if I truly were to fall or lose my ability to breathe.

My problem was, would it really be like fillying if I just needed another person to talk to, if only for a little while? They say a malchick can go mad if he spends too much time totally isolated. Come to think of it, any lewdie could go mad if left without lovely orange company for too long. I still had no idea about how well the rest of my droogs were faring elsewhere, because my questions about all five of 'em had gone unanswered by the nurses. I also could not wish for any one of my family to show up unannounced, and then to come straight to my room for us to have a little govoreet and a smeck. Would it still be so baddiwad if I made a move to change my isolation, and probably also entertain a few members of the hospital staff at the same time?

I moved a few fingers towards hitting that red button and changing my situation for the better…only to hear a few hard clops at my hospital room door one second later.

_Figures._

This isolation had just about gotten to me already, no thanks to how I'd hesitated for too long in deciding what to do with myself. Ah, well…a little routine visit with another hospital staff member couldn't hurt me, especially if they were a willing volunteer.

"Mr. Antonelli?"

My hand moved away from the button just as I heard a much different goloss call my eemya. This one had none of the warmth or curiosity of the workers in these walls. Instead, the stiffness of this one told me he just might have been up to a little rozz business where I was concerned.

"In," I told him, but not without like feeling some millicent just trotted his patrol horse over my grave. This ought to be interesting.

In walked one of those dodgy sergeant types; square jaw, wrinkle-free uniform, and a promise in the old glazzies that he was by no means here to play eegras with me and mine. I did my best to look curious and unsuspecting, even though I would have loved nothing more than to miraculously heal and run like hell to get away from him.

"Been through the mill, have you, boy?"

"Very probably," I told him, shrugging my one shoulder because the other would make my broken arm act up. "A boy like me isn't safe on these foul streets no more, sir."

"So you say."

He wasted no time in getting down to his type of business, because the next thing I saw was him with a notepad and a loaded pen, ready to shoot down me and my droogies with every slovo that came out of it.

"Your full name, please, and be truthful."

_Me, lie about my own name? Wouldn't you just love for me to try?_

"William Antonelli, sir."

"Italian, are you?"

"Right, sir, mother's side and all that."

"All right…"

There were a few scratch-scratch sounds as he took pen to paper, writing down each and every one of my slovos for the sake of posteriority.

"…And who gave you all these injuries, Mr. Antonelli?"

"That Burgess malchick with his singing, dancing band of bratchnies, who else? Have you caught 'em yet?"

"This isn't about Burgess, boy. This is all about what you did last night to Miss Walker."

_Miss Walker should have walked off and not been so mouthy_, I wanted to shout at him, and maybe even throw a pillow or a breakable object for laughs and lashings. Instead, all I could do was sit quiet, and do my best to look confused.

"Miss Walker? What about her? What's happened to her?"

"You _promised_, Antonelli."

I got a chill up my back as I heard that cop start quoting my slovos back at me.

"You promised not to hurt her. You _promised_."

"And I _didn't_ hurt her, she just fell and tore up her—"

"—You said you'd take her to her flat, get her a new coat, and _then_ bring her straight back to the lecture hall party."

"Look, I never promised—"

"—You promised not to hurt her, and then you lead her to that old theater, and then ripping off her clothes and dragging her to the stage—"

"—Hey, mate, she _wanted_ it, ask her about all those photos and calendars—"

He grabbed me by the neck and just about broke it shoving me against the bed…almost. Too bad killing suspects wasn't in his job description, otherwise he would have done me in for sure.

"Four o' clock," he growled in my litso, making me wish I could disappear. "Two weeks from today, State Court building, twenty minutes before your scheduled appointment. The judges want to see you, Antonelli, and you had better damn well not disappoint them."


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** I've taken up a few fastballs and thrown 'em in this latest installment…firstly, there's a rock band somewhere who deliberately named themselves 'Billyboy on Poison' after seeing this movie, so whenever I have the word poison capitalized, you'll know why. Second…I've quietly figured to myself that Em and Meggie would be treated a little less harshly than any other girl or woman due to their being related to this character, so…I hope it fits him and his behavior somehow. On with the show.

**Nine**

I didn't want to think about it, all that the razz had growled about into my litso. I didn't want to think about getting dragged in front of a gang of starry crusty judges, or about viddying Lydia and another gang of pissed-off devotchkas like creeching and pointing their fingers at me, or about the smack-smack of that gavel that would guarantee me a long time in the stripy hole. I wanted to think about nicer things, like finding my way back to that junkyard and going home and numbing out that razz's goloss with a poke of the old Poison right into my arm.

I wanted to think about not having to return to work in the restaurant, and not deal with drunkie lewdies who complained that their chips were too hot no more. I wanted to lock _them_ up in one room and stab 'em with my nozh like little fishies in a barrel, until Alex and the rest of 'em agreed to give me and mine all the streets in exchange for 'em being allowed to live to their next birthdays. I wanted most of all to take all the pretty polly I got from those streets and dump it into Em's lap so she wouldn't have to do the old in-out no more, and so we both could quit that damned restaurant, and so we could all live richly.

Instead I got random visitors in and out of my hospital room, no news about Leo or my other malchicks, drippy hospital food, and me like dreaming about that white door in the red hallway and screaming _Come out of there you bratchny, is my Dad in there or not_? It was a baddiwad veshch to know absolutely nothing about what was going on outside your own door. I was left with no one but the hospital staff and that damned television until Em visited me in the eve, and after a bit of playtime with Meggie and Little Brother Liam, I could only say Night-Night without bringing up that malenky visit to the State building in the fortnight.

It wasn't until the next morning that veshches got real rotten real skorry.

First came the usual orderly with a malenky bit of pancakes and sausage for me, and after I'd managed to enjoy that sitting up halfway the way I did, out he went and in came Em again, slapping a half-opened letter on my lap as she walked in with Meggie and the usual gazetta in tow.

"Four o'clock, is it?" she asked me, letting Little Sister climb up into her lap as they both sat down.

"Beg pardons?" I said, pretending on purpose that I hadn't heard a slovo she said.

"The time you have to show up at Court, William. It does say four o'clock on the summons, doesn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"—What time do you have to walk into the double doors?"

"…Twenty minutes beforehand?"

"I knew it."

I got the third Look of the week from her, and it was a lot darker than the other two I got from her just yesterday. That's what I got for them sending the same note in the mail to her as they govoreeted once to me.

"I just _knew_ this was bound to happen someday. Oh, I know all about it, don't think I don't," she went on, raising a hand to keep me from talking.

"Don't think I didn't notice all those bloody rags you hid under your bed, because guess what? I found 'em all when I went off to do laundry, make no mistake! I also just got rid of this little needle and powder set I found in your room, did you know? I guess that's one less mess you're going to make for yourself, isn't it?"

"That was my needle," I growled, my unbroken hand clenching into a fistie. "That was _my_ needle, damn you! Who said you could go in there and throw my things out?"

"Things or no things, William, _I_ still got the deed to that flat!" Em snapped back, barely noticing the way Meggie tried covering her ookos.

"As long as it's my name on that paper, you're just gonna have to live with what I keep or don't keep, you understand?"

I said nothing in return, but just stared and narrowed my glazzies as though I dared her to a fistfight and wanted to settle things the Nadsat way. I'd tried to hide my Poison and my little eegras as best I could, only to viddy 'em get taken away from me at long last. I might have been the man of the house when that John was away, but I was about next to nothing when Em was home.

"And don't dare look like that, either. If I were you, William, I'd be horribly glad the young lady got away, and didn't wind up de…D-E-A-D like other people who have no protection!"

"D-E-A-D…?"

Bezoomny as I was, that one slovo got my attention real skorry.

"What do you mean by that, Em? What's so bad that we have to spell it out in front of Megs?"

"See for yourself," said Em, picking up her latest gazetta and handing it to me. No sooner did I do as she said than I viddied something welcome and unwelcome all at once. Some unmarried lady out in the countryside got her gulliver bashed in last nochy, according to the front page, and guess who I should viddy side-by-side with her last photo?

None other than _him_, with the red red krovvy dripping from his rot and nose, and an odd sort of grin plastered on his litso like somebody had stuck his yarbles into a vice the moment they hit the shutter button. Little Alex himself had just self-destructed, and all for some malenky Beethoven statue which they said was left at the scene of the crime. It was welcome because I now had one less roadblock in the way of my claiming the streets, but at the same time unwelcome because there was no way for me to take what was rightfully mine. I would not get to itty off after the complainer, the idiot, or the whiny brat as I'd originally planned inside the safety of my rasoodock. I was stuck until the time of my trial in around thirteen days, and after that…what? Sit and force a grin as some other malchick got all the pickings of the streets?

"One less criminal to worry about," Em was like muttering to herself, rocking Meggie and stroking her voloss out of her glazzies. "No, correction—make that _two_. If this isn't enough to make you get off the streets, then—"

"—Who said I even _wanted_ to get off the streets, Em?"

The two of us stared at each other for a minute, me feeling like somebody had just rammed my own knife through my stomach, and she looking like I'd just hit her in the face.

"Who said I _ever_ wanted to leave, Em? Don't you know just how many people sneak around outside at night? Don't you know how many of 'em have loaded wallets?"

"I know all about 'em, too, William," she answered, rolling her eyes. "You forget, some of those people end up in my—my B-E-D-R-O-O-M every night, don't they?"

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, Em. I was too busy thinking about us all going hungry to focus in on that at all."

How I wanted to turn my litso towards the wall and slooshy to the both of 'em leave. Oh, how I wanted that gloopy conversation to end right then and there. I could have come up with a Plan B to get out of this hospital and away from that Court, and so live to tolchock another night. I could have put snotty Miss Lydia Walker on the back-burner, and then lured some silly devotchka into my waiting rookers before giving her the strong peet, and _then_ fillying round with her as soon as it took hold. Most of all, I could have stopped viddying Em like glaring at me, and so made me feel as though I were six years old again with one rooker in the old cookie jar.

Unfortunately, what Megs said next made me realize this was nothing but the beginning of my troubles.

"Mummy, what Court is Billy gonna play in?"

_Play? Don't I _wish _I was playing right now!_

"What do you mean, Meggie?"

"Um…is he gonna go play in the basketball court?"

"Different Court, dearie," Em corrected her. "_This_ Court is where the bad people go, just like the boy in the newspaper today. They all have to go to Court when they're caught."

"What happens when they get there, Mummy?"

"Well, first the Court asks some people about what the bad person did, and then if they feel like it, they'll make the bad person sit down in front of 'em and give his side of the story. If he looks sad about what he did, or if there's something wrong with his mind, they let him go with special treatments to help him not do any more bad things. If he tells one true story and someone else tells a lie to hurt him, they let him go with no questions asked, and they look for the real bad person."

"And…and what happens if the bad person isn't sorry, or—or if he does the lying?"

"Then they send that bad person away for a long time so he can't do any bad things to anyone else."

_Hear that, Alex? I just might be joining you in two weeks. Aren't _you _the bastard now?_

"Mummy…?"

"Hm?"

"Are they gonna send Billy away for a long time?"

Em just looked at me with those empty glazzies, and for one minoota I almost thought I heard her sniffle.

"Well, dearie…I guess we'll just have to let the State decide, won't we?"


	10. Chapter 10

_**Author's Note/Shameless Plug Alert:**_ Hey, all you devotchkas out there! Go say Hi hi hi there to **AshleyFiction**, and be sure to leave some friendly feedback to her story, **Bruises and Bitemarks**! Done? Great. On with the horror show.

Please excuse that this took me a while…I had writer's block and some RL issues to deal with, but hopefully things might be better for a while…anywho, here's the next chapter…hope it's a good one.

**Ten**

There was so much I could have worried about over what was left of my two weeks in the old hospital.

I could have panicked when Toby showed up in my room one day, like shivering and muttering about the moodges in the white coats right before some orderly led him back to his own room. I could have felt bolnoy at the idea of him and Charlie getting sent back to that sanatorium until the big big Trial Day happened.

I could have wondered what to say to Liam and Meggie before the trial if I viddied 'em at all, and if the absolute worst should happen, how I would say bye-bye to 'em as they carted me away to the stripy hole. I could have planned a few good slovos for Em if she would not viddy me again for a while, as well as one little request for her not to itty on under her John as she did for ages. I could have thought up some other lovely parting words for those five boys in my gang, and maybe given 'em all some home of seeing my grinning face again.

I could have asked to slooshy Led Zeppelin about ten or twenty more times before the Trial, and maybe played it as gromky as I could so a load of other lewdies would have to enjoy it the same as I did. I could have let the shakes I got from my lack of the Poison take me over, and not bother to keep myself warm so they would have to put me in the old Drug Tank.

I could have like stupidly daydreamed about finding Miss Purple on her oddy-knocky one nochy, and hearing all about how she faked an orgasm because little Alex was just too damned _little_. I could have had naughty dreams afterwards of that same Miss Purple unable to handle me because I turned out to be much too _big_.

Most of all, I could have felt real bezoomny that my Pee wasn't there to help me, leaving me and mine pretty much on our own to take whatever was coming like a bunch of hard-edged malchicks. I could have done all that and more, and so maybe felt sorry for myself somehow…but I _didn't_. I didn't want any of 'em to viddy me weak on that big big Trial Day, and I didn't plan on like acting weepy or upset so that they could brag of getting to me at last. That would have told 'em how much they'd won, and that was no way for some Nadsat like me to live.

What I wanted more than anything else was to make Miss-Perfect-Lydia-Walker _squirm_.

Oh yes, I did want that very, very much. I was by no means anybody's servant or slave, and I would not let myself ever get treated like one. I'd had enough of that by Em's John, Jerome, every day at home, which would be no excuse for me to get the same treatment from her.

I wanted her to see that one conviction wouldn't ever be enough to stop me from being as baddiwad as I wished. I wanted to viddy her nervous litso the moment I limped my way into the courtroom, along with those judgmental lewdies who would no doubt glance my way and then whisper to their neighbors all about me and mine.

I wanted to see her stare down at the floor every time I glared her way. I wanted to viddy the fear in her glazzies, and I wanted her to believe I could like magically heal myself and then pounce on her again. I wanted to make her think that this time, I would take her in front of a hundred witnesses and also magically make 'em unable to move a muscle to stop me. I wanted to let her know that no matter what, I would come back somehow and succeed where I'd failed before.

I wanted to be powerful again, and not held back any more by these casts or these crutches. I wanted the chance to track down those remaining three skitebirds that Alex left behind, and finally take 'em out odin by odin so that if he ever came back, he'd have no shaika at all whilst I still had all of mine with me.

_See if he called me Eunuch then!_

I got to spend some time on my own imagining that and a little bit more, like pounding in the litsos of a load of lesser malchicks in lesser gangs, and then robbing them of what they had in their carmans so that all their pretty polly and jewels would be mine all mine. I could also imagine finding that skitebird's walking-stick and smashing it open with my bare rookers, only to find that he'd hidden all his shiny stuff in it, which would make quite the jingle-jangle as I took it into my own possession. I read a little bit as well, and found out how that one missing malchick from the sinny turned up in the hospital the very next morning, like staring about wildly and calling for his Pee, who wasted no time in breaking the speed limit just to viddy him proper. Too bad Em took her time in visiting me; otherwise I might have had something to grin about later on.

One hour ticked off to the next, the hours turned into days, and after figuring out what time it was based on what sort of meal I got served by the orderlies, the Big Trial Day finally showed up. I figured that out because Em had delivered a ratty starry black suit to my room the night before, telling me that I would have to wear it for the Trial, and that I should look oomny for when my lawyer arrived on the scene. After a slow, painful fight to haul myself into the bathroom and another struggle to get my broken arm and leg through the sleeves and other holes, I managed.

I'd had a good easy breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and a cup of coffee that morning, so I wouldn't wander into that building with an empty brooko. I would go with as much full-strength as I possibly could, if not also fully awake before and after they decided to hand over my sentence for their own kind of laughs and lashings. I'd also succeeded in getting my voloss to look like something other than an overgrown bush, and thankfully I hadn't had to use any grease to do that. My gulliver was a bit clearer as I waited for Em to come back, because she'd made such a big deal over the Trial that naturally, I thought she would want to be the first to shove me into the snake pit that was the State Court. Today, however, I'd thought wrong.

No sooner did I sit down than _he_ managed to walk in, not like bothering to knock or say 'Hello' as he'd always done since I was a kid. There stood Jerome in all his gloopy glory, viddying himself as some king of concrete in that ratty fur coat and that ugly red-striped stocking cap. All I saw when I looked at that bastard was a fake and an idiot, a liar who didn't own any silver-topped canes or real alligator sabogs no matter how much he said he did. Those would be nothing but idealized plastic and plain old metal, because I'd snuck a look at 'em years ago to see if I could sell 'em without him knowing it until it was too late. In a way, though, he _was_ the king, and the undisputed surrogate 'Daddy' of all the malchicks and ptitsas his whores had managed to pop out over the years. I would know all about that, because I was one of 'em.

"Got yerself caught at last, did you?" he smirked, rocking back and forth on his heels like some gloopy toy horse.

"_Nearly_," I answered, moving myself forward on my crutches and trying not to stare too long at the skitebird. If I did, then he might get the chance to make some rotten face at me and provoke me to take a swing at him…only to beat me up until I bruised, which was his favorite prank to play on me and a load of the other kids. Em must have sent him here for his own brand of discipline, because she didn't have the spine to do the really nasty things herself.

Unfortunately for her, I might be strong enough for just that if Jerome himself wasn't careful.

"Let's get this over with, all right? I'm not in the mood for any games right now."

Jerome just smiled and acted like I could pass by him…only to grab me by the gorlo and squeeze. _Hard_.

"What's that tone of voice for, Tony?"

He knew I hated that nickname, but he said it every chance he got as an excuse to start something. He also knew that as baddiwad as I had fought him before, I could only do it today with just one good rooker. I barely moved his like clawing fingers a centimeter away from my windpipe, helpless as I began to viddy stars and gasp for air.

"Did you just mouth off to me, Tony?"

Those claws cut deeper into my gorlo, making me struggle even harder to breathe as I felt both my legs give way, pulling me down and holding me up all at once.

"Did you?"

All I could do was try to shake my gulliver before I passed out, which I somehow managed to do in spite of how weak Jerome made me. He let me go with a rough, loud smeck, but not before watching me fall onto the floor and tossing my crutches down after me.

"That's good, then, Tony, because I ain't takin' any of yer mouth today, how's that?"

He didn't wait for an answer this time. Instead, he just kicked the side of my broken leg and jammed a finger in the direction of my crutches.

"Now pick those up and get back on yer feet, 'cause we don't want to be late for your big Court appearance. Ye got five minutes, Tony, or next time it's my cane against your bum leg."


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note:** It's been five months to the day in which I first submitted this story…and since then, I've received at least four hundred hits, fourteen comments, and one subscriber. I've also noticed some good pieces of work floating around in this fandom, so…I believe some thanks and congratulations are in order:

Thank you and congratulations to **LetitBeXO** for giving this character a chance, and for creating a story that a hard-edged devotchka like me could sink her zoobies into.

Thank you to **Dan Sickles** for taking a moment to drop by, if only once, and also for beginning a look through Frank Alexander's eyes so that everyone can see how the loss of his beloved bride affects his outlook on the world.

Thank you to **KissingFairies** for an alternate viewpoint into the life of droogs, specifically the four main Nadsats and the devotchkas who love them.

Thank you to **AshleyFiction** for a nice battle of wills in her story, 'Bruises and Bitemarks' (which I hope will continue!).

And last but certainly not least…thank you to **PandaLove01** for being here from the start, and providing a constant, welcome source of cheerleading for my inspiration and hard work. May this latest chapter be the next rung in what I hope will be a ladder of twists and turns that makes for a great story.

**Eleven**

Today might have been the last time I ever viddied our starry junkyard up close.

That was the messel that crossed my rasoodock as Jerome yeckated us past it on our way to the Courts. The hospital staff had let him take me away all too easily, because the two of us looked scruffy enough to be like considered father and son. I was a little bit glad that Em had already told me _that_ wasn't true, otherwise I might have shived myself a long time ago to avoid the shame of it.

At the same time, I hated myself for not having at least one glazzie on the horizon long before me and my shaika raised our rookers against that Lydia Walker. We could have viddied Alex and those others coming a mile away, and so maybe ittied off somewhere else besides into that old ex-music hall so that we would not have been interrupted one malenky bit. We should not have been so gloopy like we were that nochy. If we'd wised up for just one minoota, we could have all enjoyed Lydia's favors and not viddied no trouble until long after the big climax. If I'd wised up, I could have taught my lesson and then moved on to the next bit of filly-time, no questions asked. Instead, we all got taken by surprise by _him_, and barely lived to tell about it later.

That was the first veshch I would have to keep in mind if I ever wanted to viddy those streets again, and if I ever got the chance to viddy them, also. Failure would not be a dobby veshch for me and mine, and neither would it be welcome for my house if I didn't bring 'em as much of the like shiny stuff as I dreamed about. I would also have to figure out some better way to enter those nightly bitvas, because swooping down on anyone and getting my gulliver bashed in was no longer the way to go. If I managed to get a light punishment today, and if such veshches were possible, I would find a better way to drat and viddy to it that my brothers got taught that better way. And once we had all become better and like able to properly defend ourselves…all the other shaikas would have to always look over their pletchoes, lest they found _us_ standing there, ready to take 'em on.

The second thing to remember was this—_never_ forget to make sure Toby checked the area out first, and _foremost_. I had done just that in the heat of my own madness, and so I could not risk falling short like that a second time if I wanted the streets all to myself. Before, I had succeeded at least half a dozen times on my oddy-knocky when it came to stray devotchkas like begging for lubbilubbs, or whatever they called that cal these days. They labeled it as 'hooking up,' of course, but for me and mine, we called it filly-time because it would never last very long with someone like me. Once I got 'em all drunk enough and completely off their guard, it stopped being lovely at all. _Period_. Half a dozen on my own, oh yes, and at least three or four times more in the company of my shaika. The vino was what we used on 'em if we were in a good mood, and if the soomkas angered us first, we would just cut to the chase and have our way with 'em properly. Only once had I ever gotten like drunk alongside the devotchka of the nochy, and as of today, I had long forgotten her eemya. Therefore, if I got lucky and didn't have to be locked up in the stripy hole forever, I would have to put away any messels of that as an eegra. Instead, I would concentrate on the old twenty-to-one as a means to my vengeance where Miss Perfect Lydia was concerned.

And once I had taken care of her and won my place on the streets, if dobby fortune was mine…I might just then go looking for Miss Purple, if only to find out whether or not she could have used a true Nadsat in her jeezny. Until that time arrived, it was off to the State Court building, and everything it stood for. Jerome had taken us halfway there, because I could viddy very easily that the Building itself waited in the distance. It was hard for someone like me to miss, because it stood out as a thin black skyscraper in the middle of grays, blues, and whites like some lovely obelisk in a museum. I could not, then, feel anything else but bolnoy to my stomach at the sight of it, because that could be the last building I went to before they locked me and mine away for Bog knew how long. For one malenky second, I imagined pushing my auto door open and tumbling out onto the road before Jerome could hit the brake; then like miraculously running away from the entire city and Jerome, too, just like that gloopy Southern Yankee malchick had ran away from those bullies in the sinny.

Then came the big Tower Bridge, and my chance at getting away came and went. I could not leave that auto unless I wanted a drop of several hundred feet into the freezing Thames River, and so off to my early death as well. It was tempting, considering how the infamous Tower of London rested a handful of blocks away from where I sat now…but I resisted, even if only a little. Besides, if there were two things I never wanted to viddy up close; it was a thin sheet of ice and freezing water right underneath.

"Ain't that a charming spot up there, Tony? Nan Bullen lived there right before they chopped her head off. Who knows? Maybe you'll be next!"

Jerome busted out smecking at his version of a joke, but I remained silent, even though I wanted to remind him that her gulliver had been _shived_ off, and not chopped at all. I found that I had no messels whatsoever about that damned Tower, just as long as I didn't have to come anywhere near it anytime soon. It was that _other_ tower that bothered me, that tall dark veshch that just kept creeping closer and closer as we drove. What else waited for me up there, besides the obvious State Court and whatever sentence they decided to drop into my lap? What else did those lewdies inside it do all day, besides slapping the wrists of low-level criminals like me and mine?

I didn't have too long to think that question over, because the next thing I knew, Jerome had stopped the auto, climbed out, and then started clopping on my door so that I would do the same.

"Out with you, Tony, and be quick about it. Not much time left 'til four o'clock, is there? Hurry up, now!"

It was a slow, painful gooly to the entrance on crutches, and from there, through the hallways until we found the reception desk somewhere around the middle. I tried like peering around to see if Leo or any of my others waited nearby, but they were nowhere in sight. Next came another painful walk to the elevators followed by a slow fall to the floors below, after which the doors opened with a dinging collocoll, and what should I viddy at last but that red red hallway and the white door at the very end?

Something about that door made me not want to go a single step further, oh no. Maybe I wouldn't have gone at all, if Jerome hadn't tugged my broken arm and made me wince my way into following him out of that elevator. Something about today told me that my most repeating dream was not about to come true at all, because there was no way Jerome would have dragged me all the way out here just to show me who he thought my Pee could be. There was also no way that rozz would have found out what I wanted that easily, because there was no such veshch as like mindreading or wish fulfillment in the real world. That would have made me happy, not poogly out of my rasoodock as I was right now.

No, I was going off to my doom, and there was nothing to be said or thought of it besides hoping my case didn't involve some big-time Executioner. I could only limp along after Jerome on my way to that white door, counting the times my broken leg hit the ground, adding it to the times my crutches did likewise, and making up a little warble to keep myself from losing it.

Thud-thump, thud-thump,-thud thump…

_One, two, I'm coming for you…three, four, you can't hide any more…_

Thud-thump, thud-thump, thud-thump…

_Five, six, let's pick up some bricks…seven, eight, let's throw them straight…_

…Thud-thump.

_Nine, ten, here's trouble, men!_

The both of us had stopped just outside of that white door, and Jerome had to be the one to open it because I felt a bit too poogly that a big red krovvy river would come pouring out of that door any minoota. I got to spend a malenky bit of time peering in at that Court room, if only to viddy the two pits that got carved into the floor, and to find out that one of those pits was for me and mine while the other was meant for the judge and jury, sort of. Miss Perfect got the place of honor right smack in the middle of the room, because the Courts always knew just how to honor the accusers. As I limped my way in and over to that first pit, I watched her glance up at me, cringe, and then hide her litso in her Pee's pletcho, as he had been like sitting very close by along with her Em. _Horrorshow_. Injured as I was, I hadn't lost my ability to scare any devotchka I came across.

"Let's get this thing over with, shall we?" Jerome wondered out loud, ready to start in on a malenky bag of peanuts as surely as any lewdie in the sinny. My big big Trial Date had begun.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:**My thanks to RootsOfAHotelWindow for putting this on their alert list. Maybe he/she could leave some feedback sometime? I just love visitors…:D

Anywho, before I get too excited…here's chapter 12, my little droogies. Take care!

**Twelve  
**

I wish I could say that this starry judge had dealt with Lydia Walker on one of her famous baddiwad days. I wish I could say that she'd like snapped at the wrong State official, and that he'd decided to give her the same treatment rather than prosecute me one malenky bit. That would have put the little soomka in her place all proper, and doubly so if he'd tolchocked her in the litso whilst he shouted his hatred of her for all to slooshy. That might also have left me and my shaika in the clear, which in turn might have let us return to the hospital in peace, get back to our old strength, and finally itty out again in search of safer streets and bigger rewards to be found there. Alex's absence would have improved everything for us, and had this judge helped us along somehow, the pretty polly and the devotchkas would have been ours all ours.

Unfortunately for me and mine, this same judge had a soft spot for weepy malenky devotchkas, especially them who got pushed around too hard by the bolshy malchicks. All of Lydia's boohoohooing paid off after an hour or so, because not only did they call in that rozz and have him tell everybody else the slovos I'd shared with him, he also said he'd govoreeted to the rest of my shaika and that they'd all more or less confessed. He was as good as some goloss recording machine, because I could hear him like quoting what I'd said back to that judge, as well as how my droogs claimed that they were 'just following my orders'.

Those slovos sent Toby and Charlie packing for the Sanatorium after the judge called us all heartless miscreants and proclaimed us guilty, and then sent me and my other three off to what he called the 'Juvenile Detention Center'. We would have to live there until all of us turned eighteen sooner or later, and then we would itty off to the stripy hole until the time of our twenty-first birthdays. That would be a good four years away for me, provided I didn't catch some bad illness behind those walls and no bezoomny malchicks attempted to snuff me out before I could come home. At least I would have Leo, Joel, and Nick with me until that time decided to arrive…or so I had thought as we limped, winced, and struggled our way to the special Detention Bus that the Court had pointed us towards. They told me and mine that we had a long trip ahead of us, but I didn't care. I counted myself real lucky that they all hadn't been sent off to that Sanatorium and so left me all on my oddy-knocky to face that Center by myself. No, instead, we would take that long trip together, and still viddy each other from time to time before they viddied it fit to split us up into different prisons.

How little I understood. How little we _all_ understood in the end.

Our first stop was some place in Kent a short distance away from home, and there we found a few towering buildings surrounded by chain-link fences topped with barbed wire to stop any malchicks from running away or climbing away, for that matter. It wasn't as though any of us planned to do that any time soon…but then again, I supposed such a big place would need some natural protection from the more rotten of the lewdies that lived there. With that messel on my rasoodock, I was prepared to lead the way down the stairs of that bus, taking Nick, Joel, and Leo along with me through that big big gate of the Center and facing whatever waited for us head-on.

Unfortunately, the driver of that bus stopped me with her rooker before I could even do so much as stand up or reach for my crutches.

"Not you, boy, just your friend there," she said in a falsely cheery goloss. "You wouldn't want to overcrowd the place so quickly, now, would you?"

I noticed that she must have been govoreeting about Joel just now, because I viddied my one droog pull away from her then, his glazzies wide and his gulliver like shaking no no no. _Alone_? Now? In a big big place like that one? Joel had been the one among us who liked pink as a color the most, and a few skitebirds from skolliwoll had once smecked all about how Joel thought like a malenky ptitsa when it came to the tall, long-haired malchicks hanging around the shops. What chance would he have if there were meaner vecks waiting to hear this, and who wanted some kind of reason to tolchock him senseless?

"Are you sure about that, missus?" I began in a like friendly goloss, but not without wishing for my old switch-blade nozh so that I could at least try to strong-arm her into having our way.

"Oh, yes, it'll be just the one in front of me, and no others," she went on, this time giving me and the others an insisting glance with her glazzies.

"You three have got a special train to catch, I'm afraid. Do you want to be late and in even more trouble than you already are…or are you going to let your best mate go?"

I looked over at Joel first, and then over to Nick and Leo, and I viddied no other way out of it. There was no way for us to go together because they'd send three of us away on the spot, and there was no way for none of us to leave that bus because they'd probably drag Joel off and get a good smeck out of it, too. The only way now was that driver's way, and we had no other choice but to follow it.

"All right boys," I finally said, but not without like feeling a sort of tightness in my gorlo. "Let's all shake hands now, and then say no more."

It was an odd sight, us moving all our broken arms to try and grip Joel's, us chumbling our goodbyes when what we really wanted to do was tell that driver how full of vonny cal she was and how we'd razrez her apart if she didn't give us the steering wheel right then and there. We would not have gotten far at all no thanks to those broken arms and legs, of course, and so we could only watch Joel itty down those bus stairs and into the like waiting police car, and then out of that car once he was behind the center's gate, and then through the doors and into the center itself, and finally disappear from view.

We would have to repeat that Fond Farewell two more times that day, because then that driver took us remaining three malchicks straight to the espresso rapido station afterwards and made us all get on board. It was somewhat of a long way between London and Northamptonshire because we had to cross through two other 'Shires to get there, and on the way we had to sit in between three bolshy, hard-edged rozzes who kept their glazzies on us at all times, even when we had to itty off and answer the call of nature and all that cal.

It was well past six o'clock in the Eve when we got there, but none of us had no more than a few bits of kleb and half a cup of milky chai each because all three of us were heartbroke that they were like splitting us up the way they did. At Northamptonshire, Nick had to go with the rozz nearest the center aisle after a second round of farewells and handshakes, and from there that rozz would yeckate him to a second juvenile detention mesto because the first one had only odin cell open for Joel. Nick had always been horrorshow with his fisties long ago, just as long as none of his enemies had any milk-plus before we fought 'em. Would he be as lucky in his new home? I couldn't help but think that veshch over as the espresso rapido pulled away, and long after that auto had taken Nick to wherever that center waited for him.

Now there was only me and Leo left, and just like the beast of his eemya, he kept his gulliver up even though the both of us weren't feeling so horrorshow. For two years and six months running we'd had our shaika, two malchicks over the limit as it was, but for three years before that we'd been in and out of the corrective schools as a pair of good and faithful droogs should be. In fact, if a lewdie wanted to be short and to the point, they could say that we'd just about viddied it all—rivalries between one wing and another, attacks from the official correctives, fights that happened when one old shaika member ran into his enemy from the other, fights that happened when the pishcha was too sour or runny, fights that happened when one malchick didn't like the tone of some other malchick's skin, and _lest_ I forget, that occasional time when a rookerful of bolshy malchicks decided to make some malenky shoot their soomka for the day. It had been all about survival because none of us had their Pees around to point out which was dobby and which was baddiwad, and so we had no other choice but to try things out for ourselves and viddy what happened later. Would the two of us be tough enough to handle a whole lot more of this sort of jeezny, cut off as we would be soon? I didn't want to think about it, but when I saw Leo glancing my way, I knew that he must have been thinking about the same veshch as I was.

We must have gone on thinking about that same veshch until Nottinghamshire, because then the second-to-last rozz on that train with us tapped Leo on the shoulder and then pointed at the aisle, letting him know it was his turn to get up and take that ride in the auto to the detention center gates. It was a bit past seven when that happened, but it didn't make it any easier for either of us Nadsats. In fact, I could have almost sworn I viddied Leo's litso wrinkle up almost as though he wanted to platch to himself how rotten and heartless this big big separation really was. It was the worst sort of punishment any of us could have been given in this jeezny, and those lewdies in the State building hadn't thought twice about carrying it out.

"Well, off you go then," I said, barely keeping my own goloss under control. "Best not keep those OC's waiting, eh?"

"You'll write me once you get to where you're headed, right, Billyboy?" he asked me, bravely ignoring the way that rozz pulled at his arm and tried to privodeet him off.

"Once I get this cast off and track your S-mail down, you'll hear from me every week," I promised. That seemed to satisfy my old droog, because then he stood up as straight as he would go and gave me our special shaika salute before disappearing, a dobby L-shape with his thumb like pointing downward and his forefinger pointing to his right. I was all on my oddy-knocky now, and I would have to stay that way for the rest of the espresso rapido ride to only Bog knew where.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note**—I solemnly swear to not harm this character by any attempts at romanticizing or 'shipping' him with canons or OC's…I've done a lot of thinking and second-guessing about this, and I've concluded that the grounds/facts I laid down to explain Pete's need of romance just aren't there in BB's case. Therefore…I blame 'Scum' (1979) and 'Made in Britain' (1982) for all the hard-edged characterization in store for this malchick, and hereby christen him the Anti-Romeo. Thank you and goodnight.

**Thirteen**

My final stop finally came when that espresso rapido stopped at Durham, somewhere between good solid land and that bolshy chilly North Sea. The last rozz left to me had to shake me awake then, because I must have dozed off and not really thought about it until the both of us were like supposed to get out. Once we'd left that espresso rapido and found our way to the rozz-auto sent to deliver us elsewhere, that was when the real fun started. By that time, it was well past eight in the Eve, and so I got yeckated through those cobbled streets and across this odin stone bridge in full dark without that rozz saying one single solitary slovo to me.

It wasn't until we got back onto solid road that the rozz govoreeted into a speaker-box, letting someone in my waiting detention center home-to-be that I was about to be delivered into their waiting rookers. A few minutes later, we came to the front of this bolshy brick building with a see-through metal garage door. That was the very door the rozz's auto passed through to take me inside, for as I had done with my droogs a few times before, I would have to be like checked for hidden metallic veshches and then put into the official registry.

Ah, well…at least there was no need of handcuffs, because I would not be able to make a run for it or tolchock the rozzes even though nothing would have made me happier than to do so. What I did do was get myself scanned with a metal detector upon entrance into the intake hallway—a pointless sort of veshch because I'd lost my nozh and other tools already—and asked for my full eemya, age, date of birth, birthplace, and some other general questions, but not before I gave up my one sabog, my belt, and any veshches I might have been carrying in my carmans. I did my best, though, because even with my broken arm and leg, I'd gone through this big like receiving routine before, so there was nothing new about it for me. Still…I figured that if I was going to be here for however long until my next birthday, I was going to have a bit of filly-time.

"Where now, Officer?" I asked that rozz at the Intake table, like playing gloopy on purpose and staring around like some lost little puppy.

"Shower room first, then back here for some more information," that rozz grunted, staring at me without blinking. "Once that's over, it's straight to the medical wing with you until your casts come off."

I braced myself for some sort of surprise attack from either of the two Officials, but surprisingly, they made no attempt to tolchock me over the gulliver or make my present injuries worse in any way. What did happen was me getting privodeeted off to the big big Shower, a nice blue-and white tile room that was empty just for me. It was quiet as a tomb in here, and for once, I thought I might get to breathe easy tonight. I would not have to face the worst of this mesto until the casts came off, and in the meantime, I could like milk the lewdies in that medical center for all they were worth. Add to that the possibility of spatting in a new bed, and I could feel a round of loud smecking coming on.

However, it was first veshches first in the meantime, and my first veshch was a good long wash after which I would itty off to my bed like the dobby malchick I might never be. One of the official correctives was all too happy to help me out there, because I got two cast-covers through the door of the shower room, and after that I traded in my platties for the veshches needed for such a wash, and after that I put those cast-covers on and got a lovely rush of hot water such as my Em's flat had never viddied. I wanted to get nice and warm from that water, and get warm I most certainly did.

And after one round of soaping, another of shampooing, and one like rinsing each for both of 'em, I pulled myself back towards the door to dry off, and to end it I got a set of nice gray platties for all my troubles. Then it was back to the Intake Table for me to tell 'em all about my food allergies and medicine allergies and all that cal. Lastly, once I'd given 'em all the malenky slovos they wanted, it was off to the Medical Center for my first nochy of spatting, where I could put down my crutches for the night and so catch my own breath.

"No hell and damnation tonight, eh, skitebirds?" I asked myself, smecking under my breath as I dragged myself across the floor to the waiting bed. I'd arrived at the best time of the nochy, when any other baddiwad malchicks were already in their rooms and so nowhere near to give me a welcoming tolchock anywhere on my broken plott. They wouldn't lay a single rooker on me until I had both my rookers and nogas working again, so I was thankful to the rozzes for that one veshch, at least. My stay in this detention center looked to be starting out real horrorshow, and so I would be all too happy to make sure it like stayed that way until the time was right. It didn't seem like all that much—a normal meal schedule, no Johns around to tolchock me, a bed to myself and not some mattress on the floor, classes just to pass the time, free time when I really needed it, and of course, visiting hours for family here and there.

Then I turned to look over my shoulder, thinking I would find my shaika there like waiting and smecking to themselves as usual, only to find nothing but a blank wall and no other lewdie present save for yours truly. That was not a pleasant veshch to experience, oh no. It reminded me of all that I had lost back home in London, and just _who_ I had lost as well. I would not get to viddy anyone inside my shaika for four years, and by that time, where would we all be? Still in the Kingdom? Slaving away in ditches? Trapped in an airport overseas? At the bottom of the big big North Sea? I didn't like the way this messel entered my gulliver and refused to go away. It wasn't my fault that I had been sent here. Me and mine would have done very well if gloopy little Alex had only stayed away. No, it was all _him_, and that alone would have to keep me going for now if I ever wanted to get out of here and the stripey hole and live to tell about it.

In the meantime, though, what on earth would I do until I got myself like released and back outside into the world…?

Whatever happened or didn't happen to me in four years didn't matter all that much. We'd always had some kind of pishcha at home, just not as much as would be considered normal or enough for a growing malchick like yours truly. And yet, good times or bad, somehow the four of us always managed to make it last the nochy. It would not be a bolshy veshch, then, if I had nothing to eat on this nochy, for I would have very little to swallow on occasion and had already learned how to deal with it. I would just tough it out tonight and have my fair share of breakfast in the morn with the rest of 'em.

I'd gotten a bit bored lifting and dropping heavy boxes alongside Em at the restaurant, so leaving that rabbit behind wasn't such a bother to me, either. I would not have to worry about like cutting my fingers on the potato slicers, burning my rookers on hot metal, and certainly not coming back to the flat with a sore back and a foul temper from pushy lewdies who didn't like the way I smelled. I might find a much better job in the meantime before they shoved me into the barry place, and I just might enjoy it at the same time.

The only real problem I had now was that gloopy starry skolliwoll that would most likely be part of my schedule now. I hadn't gone there since the day I dropped out to try my rooker at the Mary Jane with Leo's help, and would only go later because it was part of the corrective programs that the State had created for malchicks like myself. What was the point of it, though? I _already_ knew how to read, write, and add, and I knew more than my fair share of the old history books, too. I had quite a few messels stored away about the geographic and the divisive and the reciprocal, and those would not fade from my rasoodock anytime soon.

There was also my knowledge of the nozh I had to leave behind, which I'd used for my own protection as well as a lot of shiving like Nan Bullen's swordsman at the Green Tower. With all of these lessons already safe and sound inside my gulliver, was there any need for others? I knew quite a few that I would be all too willing to shove out of my memory forever. All those silly veshches like 'The State Is Your Friend' and 'Study Like the Ministers Studied'? Nothing but bolshy vonny horse cal, that's all those were. _Propaganda_. If I wanted that treatment, I would have ittied off to the sinny all day and come home a walking man-made slogan machine. Would I have to stomach that and then some over again, and would it finally sink into my rasoodock that it would somehow be more fun to be a silent like nodding malchick than a hard-edged shaika member as I'd been before? I did not want to answer myself that question, at least not yet. That would wait until later.

With my old shaika gone and my worst enemy far out of my reach, I had to start asking myself a mess of other questions instead. Would I have to survive on my oddy-knocky in prison, or would I have a new shaika to help with my own protection?

Would I make it out of this mesto alive, or might I get shived up horribly before these four years had passed?

Would I viddy my family once more, or would they never want to viddy the back of me?

Would I find myself a decent rabbit, or would I go back to like breaking every law in the State's book for laughs and lashings?

Would I take my revenge out on _him_ and _her_, or just be doomed to wander the wide wide earth in search of 'em?

Was my career as the master of the streets over at seventeen, or just going to fall asleep for a while?

And most importantly, would I ever viddy the malchicks from my old shaika again?

It would be a long time before my questions got answered, but my story was far from over.


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note**—Heya heya heya, gang…hope you're ready for some more hijinks and ultraviolence, because I've got this new chapter for you all just to keep you guys guessing. Let's just say things are about to change for this character, mmmaybe for the better, maybe not…

Anyways, before I get too distracted, I double-droog-dare you all to read and review what Pet Archer has to offer this fandom! So…go show 'em some luuuurve, mmkay? And once you do…come back here and get some more ACO fun times. Here goes nothin'!

**Fourteen**

Some eight months later or so, the Solar was a big hot glazzie in the summer sky, beating down like an angry rooker on the bolshy and the malenky detainees alike at noon o'clock sharp. A rookerful of us had been picked at random to come out here and get rid of all the trash from the detention center grounds; then come back inside and clean up all the hallways and empty the trash cans before ittying to the showers and taking a rest. We had some big important lewdies coming to tour this mesto in around dva or tri days, and according to this one malchick from the D-wing, they might also be on the lookout for some brand-new recruits to their big big rozz department. It was about time we got some dobby news around here. 

I had been like keeping myself quiet up until now, doing my best to follow most of the rules and staying out of the way of all those official correctives swarming around at all hours of the day. I had not tried to tolchock the wardens, I had not snuck a single nozh or other sharp veshch into my cell, and I had kept my spatting space clean at all times. The one malenky veshch I'd decided _not_ to do was to itty off to the stripy hole as planned after my eighteenth birthday. That was only two weeks away, and after hearing about our incoming visitors, I viddied a way to get out of this mesto real skorry, and into a mesto that _helped_ the millicents instead of just putting 'em behind locked doors. 

And why should I not have rebelled against the established order once in a while? Simple—because I had fallen in real horrorshow with a few new droogs during my time here, and instead of leaving 'em behind without a drat, maybe us all signing up to be rozzes would keep 'em with me for a longer time yet. The four of us happened to be outside and together just now, and as I reached for some piles of starry gazettas, I recalled 'em each by their eemyas. 

First, there had been Daniel shipped in from Leeds, trapped after an armed robbery when the shopkeeper's dog like surprised him at the back door. I had learned quite a few veshches from that one down in the Center's gymnasium, where he'd shown me how to drat with my fisties and my nogas like a true veck of the merzky streets. Years of living with a Pee drunk on the old firegold had softened him up towards me and my troubles, and so he'd been all too happy to teach me, and so I'd been all too keen on the learning. Second, there had been Allen, a street-sweeping sort of malchick during the day and a right rotten sort of bratchny with a lead pipe during the night. He'd been caught breaking the kneecaps of a shaika member from the East, and so he had been marked with zee-no-phobia as well as assault. 

I'd learned a bit more about pipes from him, and more than just how to use 'em for like breaking auto windows and all that cal. All of this I had later shared with Carlo, a few years younger than myself and with not much English, but with a horrorshow knowledge of Italian than I could also govoreet since I'd already learned it from the sailors coming and going from the docks at home. Because all our eemyas put together matched the first four letters of the alphabet, eventually we got around to calling ourselves the First Four of Durham. If all went well by the very end of this week, this new shaika of mine might also become the first four malchicks to leave this mesto on their own terms. 

We finished one section of the grounds and went to another, and with it some messels about my old shaika slowly crept into my gulliver. They still sent me messages from time to time, make no mistake. Well…_most_ of my old droogs did. Toby and Charlie wrote me every week or so from the Sanatorium, whilst Nick and Leo like contacted me online through the S-mail system our Centers offered us. The only difference was Joel, who'd been tolchocked to death during a detainees' riot two months ago. Us being where we were, and of no relations to him that snuffed it, we had no way whatsoever to make it to his funeral. What we could do was tear off edges from our own cell blankets, find a way to get 'em painted black, and tie 'em over the sleeves of our uniforms whether the official correctives liked it or not. I liked to think sometimes that Joel had broken a warden's gulliver before the end, but mostly I just thought about how one of us had already snuffed it, and that there were five of us left where there had once been six. We had toughed it out for six months before that hard tolchocking of Joel had happened. _How long would it take for the rest of us malchicks to snuff it, _I wondered? I didn't want to think any longer of that veshch today. There were bigger messels to mull over, oh _yes_. 

We finished another section, and then moved ourselves to the mesto right in front of our makeshift skolliwoll's door. It was then that I got this dobby sort of messel in my gulliver, and it was all about home. If I got like chosen for this rozz department, would I get to itty back to London? And if I did get back there somehow, could I then itty off to my Em's flat and surprise 'em all inside? 

Some malenky part of me wanted to viddy Little Brother Liam first and foremost, of course. He'd been only a year old and still in nappies when I'd left. The closer he would be to two years old would mean training platties and temper tantrums, no doubt in my rasoodock. Would he recognize my smecking litso if he viddied it again? Little Sister Meggie would remember me real horrorshow, her being closer to eight than to seven nowadays, but easily reminded thanks to Em's photos of yours truly. Who knows? She might even climb onto my lap again like she'd done in the hospital all those months ago…not that I would mind. And as far as Em herself, she would _definitely_ remember me, along with all the baddiwad veshches I had done and might do the moment I goolied through her door. 

Therefore, I would have no troubles like reconnecting with my family as long as the older ones had not forgotten about me, and that the youngest of 'em didn't run the other way when I came to viddy him. There was just one lewdie left at home who wouldn't be so welcoming, and that was Jerome the John. I didn't know what brand of slovos he would have sold to Em and the others in my absence, but I had a fairly horrorshow idea of what might have been on his rasoodock lately. He could have like govoreeted lots of veshches to Em and Meggie that I'd been locked up because I didn't like his authority, and that some rozz would come to lock 'em up as well if they didn't accept the rooker-to-rot jeezny that he had to offer 'em. He might also have picked up some new devotchka to spat in my old room, and if she looked a lot more molodoy than Em did… 

My fisties suddenly clang-clanged against the side of the trashcan on my next go-round, because I'd just found a _real_ baddiwad messel there. A new molodoy devotchka under Jerome the John would mean he would not want to be John to my Em no more, and that he meant to send her, Meggie, and Liam packing for the merzky streets. I'd heard about such things from Em herself and a rookerful of other naughty damas like her, and always in the hushed sort of goloss a lewdie would use when they didn't want anybody like slooshying in on their chats. I'd heard about how one devotchka called Soho Sally got pushed aside for a malenky sort of ptitsa known as Ella Elevenses, and all because the first was getting real starry whilst the other did not look one day over eighteen. That could have easily happened to Em if that sort of devotchka had shown herself long after my own arrest, and if so… 

_No_. No, I could not think of such veshches now. I had to act like a proper chelloveck and not make any of those official correctives think I'd lost my nerve. I had to make myself think that Em and the others would indeed still be at their flat when I came there, and that I could take Jerome down if I viddied any new devotchkas trying to take our home and hearth away from us. I had to believe that Allen, myself, Carlo, and Daniel would make it out of here with all of our jeeznies, and not to no stripy hole where more tolchocking and like fighting would go on and on _and_ _on_ until the rozzes decided to let us go. I would have to keep a clear rasoodock and a sharpened set of glazzies until that special Visitation Day arrived, after which I would viddy and govoreet to the leader of that rozz department and convince him to choose my shaika first above all the others. I would leave this mesto with my three new droogs beside me, or else I would let 'em all know that unless we all stayed together, I would not go with any rozzes on my oddy-knocky at all. And once we'd gotten in good with the starry rozzes down there, ha ha _ha_… 

I stopped in the middle of sweeping a bench to pull out a tattered newspaper clipping out of my right-hand carman. There was Lydia Walker again like that ad in the espresso rapido station, only this time she posed in a gulliver-shot as part of an exclusive interview of a crime victim, or some other fancy vonny cal like the slovos these reporters wrote. She'd cut her long black voloss short and straight and didn't wear any silver platties no more, but unlike her usual audience, I didn't give a second look to any of those veshches she valued. Instead, I smecked to myself over the way I'd shived up that photo real horrorshow, starting with one malenky curving line pointing up from the left edge of her printed rot and like leading downwards to the right in a perfect imitation of a Glasgow Smile. That was the very first thing I wanted to do as a rozz if and when they would accept me and mine, and once that was taken care of, I would go in search of what was left of that enemy shaika and take 'em out one way or another. Only then would I get my chance to take all that could be found in the streets of home, and so never live under Jerome's or any other veck's or malchick's thumb ever again. 

My three new droogs and I dropped the last of all that garbage into the big big trashcans, and once we'd brought 'em inside, we went straight to a table for a skorry peet of water before taking up some brooms to sweep out the hallways. There was a lot to do before those important lewdies came to viddy us and our Detention Center mesto, and we couldn't waste any time getting 'em all done.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note:** I played hooky on purpose so that I could read 'A Dance with Dragons' by George R.R. Martin. Now that I've finished it…it's back to workies and uppy-dates, right right?

**Fifteen**

It was a dobby and odd veshch to actually enjoy a hot shower's benefits inside these walls. This was the one mesto where anything from deadly tolchockings to twisted twenty-to-ones could happen...and most often _did_. I couldn't be blamed for this sort of messel, though. Back at Em's flat, our water was hot for only a malenky bit before turning lukewarm and finally ice-cold, meaning that the four of us could not use it as much as we wished. And whenever Jerome stopped over for what he called an 'unexpected meeting', he would take all of that hot water for himself, thus leaving us with nothing but the cold stuff for ourselves. Down here, it was like the hot water would never run out no matter how many malchicks got to it before me.

I supposed it was part of the territory, though—the happier us malenky lawbreakers were, the lesser the chance of us like rioting and tolchocking all the wardens and official correctives at once. That was why they gave us all these dobby veshches like hot water and full meals every day and malenky bits of filly-time here and there. And since it was now a Sunday with two days remaining until the big Surprise Visit, naturally, they would want every last malchick in this mesto to be as happy as was humanly possible…and if we weren't, we would just have to pretend or face a bolshy tolchocking later on.

That malenky act was what forced me to cheest up and dry off, put on my best black platties, get into line with the rest of my Wing, and so then march into the gym for a veshch that the official correctives called 'Services'. Most of the time I was here, we got horrorshow little sermons that reminded us to 'keep the faith', 'knock and the door will open', and a whole bunch of other slovos that were neither gloopy nor judgy to yours truly. I could handle those, because I knew now of my own plans to leave this place, and so faith was no problem for me as long as I didn't have to say just _who_ I was faithful to. Unfortunately, today they said they had a guest preacher to do the 'Services', and so every word out of his rot made me feel like I could drop my dobby act at any time and cause a mess of trouble for the entire staff.

The reason for my madness was this—our temporary visiting Prison Charlie wanted us molodoy prestoopnicks to believe everything he govoreeted on the subject of 'choices', which to me was complete chepooka and vonny horse-cal besides. Who did this veck messel that he was, telling us all that we'd go to the Big Big Oven if we didn't do what he told us to do? What was all this about like attending Mr. Devine's slovos and thinking on eternal punishment?

I already knew that there was no such veshch as some malchick 'choosing' not to fight off a rival shaika and leaving 'em alone to bleed into the sewers below. There was also no such veshch as grabbing some devotchka and dragging her into the alley, ripping all of her lovely platties from her plott, and then magically 'choosing' to give her some pretty polly for a new dress and sending her running off totally nagoy to kupet it for herself.

Oh, yes, that was all utter chepooka, and would also never happen because all the shaika members I knew would never walk out on a dobby bitva or pass up a bit of the old twenty-to-one. Moreover, any oomny lewdie who ever fought on the streets at night would know better than to believe such cal—if your worst enemy wanted to make your jeezny a living hell and he had the nozh to do so, then he most certainly would not 'choose' to leave you on your oddy-knocky unless he'd shived open your gorlo first and foremost. I'd viddied enough of my own filly-time and Alex's malenky eegras to figure that one out.

No amount of dewy-eyed platching or like begging for mercy would stop him _or_ me from having a devotchka either, not if the both of us felt like it and there were no enemy malchicks to contend with for that first splash of the virginal krovvy. It was almost like fate for me and mine when we spotted all those ptitsas crossing our path, and all of 'em thinking we would be helpful lovely chellovecks to tell 'em how to get home, only for 'em to find out what we really had on our rasoodocks when we got 'em into the shadows and took 'em for ourselves. That was our jeezny, and no slovo printed or govoreeted would ever whitewash any veshch about it.

And last but not least, there was absolutely no such veshch about being the 'more dobby veck', because when that same enemy raised his fisties against you and yours, giving a bolshy speech about walking away and like leaving all veshches alone would only get a lewdie killed. In the end, it wasn't about 'choices' or 'goodness', only about tolchocking first and foremost so that no malchick or veck would _ever_ tolchock you. So…as I raised my rooker into the air and risked a few hours in solitary for like interrupting the sermons, I decided to prove that prison Charlie horribly wrong for a few laughs and lashings.

"Excuse me, Father."

A few malchicks turned and looked at me with wide glazzies for speaking out, and a few more snickered behind their rookers, but the priest went on govoreeting, so I supposed he hadn't heard me in the middle of all his chastising about selling our whites for porridge or some other cal like that. That didn't slow me down, though, because I just cleared my gorlo, stood up, and said in a very loud sort of goloss, "Excuse me, Father!"

One minoota later, all the malchicks and the prison Charlie together had their glazzies on me, and one of the official correctives barked, "Stand down, Antonelli!" as though I'd tried taking a nozh to the padre's gorlo. I'd gotten his attention real horrorshow at last, however, because then he raised his own rooker and said to me, "It's all right, Smithers, I'll handle this…yes…your name, please?"

"Four-three-one-zero William, sir."

"All right, William…might I assume you have a _good_ reason for speaking up in the middle of my sermon?"

"Yeah."

"And it is…?"

"Simple. How can someone like me choose any sort of goodness you talk about when my idea of goodness just isn't the same as yours?"

I viddied that padre blink his glazzies once, twice, and three times over, and right then and there, I knew that I'd lost him.

"I…beg your pardon, young man?"

"It's just how it sounds, Father. Here you stand to challenge us to stop going back to prisons and detention centers, and here we sit, facing all the bad consequences of all of our wrong choices, as you say. We shouldn't have gone and broken any laws for fun, as you say, because if we hadn't, as you say, our lives would be so much safer and happier because we would get out of here and finally stay out. However, as _I'll_ say, why would I be better off standing still while a bunch of other boys beat me unconscious?"

The same malchicks who had smecked behind their rookers earlier now had their glazzies on me along with the others who had stared. _Horrorshow_. If I wanted to milk this for all that it was worth—which I did—then I would need the proper sort of audience to peet it up.

"Why would I decide not to take a girl for myself, when she was standing right in front of me and didn't have a shred of clothes on?"

I barely heard that humble-mumble-chumble of the Charlie as a rookerful of malchicks smecked out loud over my slovos. Instead, I just grinned widely and went on with my own speech, and I would offer no appy-polly-loggies to any lewdie on the staff after I was done.

"D'you think it would be a better thing for me to just hand her off to my worst enemy instead, Father? Do you think that could be like a peace offering, or something? I hand him the young lady, and he promises not to bash my brains out? What do you say to that, Father?"

"_William_." This padre seemed to have found his goloss again, because then he started in on me with a more personalized lecture. "This is not about making excuses for one's bad behavior. This is about learning to behave in some other way than what's considered destructive for everyone around them."

"All right, then, how about we dig a little deeper, Father?"

I took a few steps forward up the aisle, my rookers clasped behind my back like some polite sort of malchick wishing to govoreet nicely.

"Let's say that a certain kid like myself got himself born into a very poor part of town. Let's say that this same kid had to grow up doing without a lot of things because his family just couldn't pay for it—some of the food prices were too high thanks to bad weather, all the big brand-name clothes were priced only for the rich to buy, that sort of thing. Let's also say that there aren't a lot of good jobs where he lives, which means he can't work enough hours to earn the sort of money that _could_ have bought him those things for himself and his family together. Let's finally say that this kid gets teased right, left, and center stage by every other kid in school because he doesn't have the big big money like they do.

Suppose one of his little sisters or brothers was shivering from the cold, and all he had to do was get her a pricey thick blanket from the nearest store and so earn the respect of his peers…but _surprise_! That blanket was too high for him to buy the normal way! Do you really think that same kid would get all preachy, and let his brother or sister freeze to death just so he wouldn't have to steal that blanket to save 'em?"

I got no slovos out of that Charlie this time. I viddied his glazzies grow real wide like saucers, and I also viddied his litso turn white as snow, but as for his preachy sort of govoreeting, he had no like chastising comebacks for me.

"You say we've all got choices, Father, but the only two choices here would be stealing for the itsy-bitsy ones and watching 'em shiver themselves into an early grave, right?"

Still no slovos, but I thought I viddied him give me a malenky bit of a nod.

"All right, so…the only _real_ choice would be to save that brother or sister's life…_right_?"

Another nod from that prison Charlie, and this time I viddied him clearly like turning his own glazzies to the floor. So much for trading whites for porridge, or whatever that vonny cal was that he spat out a minoota ago. As for me, I just smiled my biggest smile with all my zoobies showing like the friendly malchick that I was not, and all because I'd just stumped this judgy know-it-all, and all because he might have to messel all veshches twice before ever govoreeting again.

"Thank you for your time, Father."


	16. Chapter 16

**Quick Author's Note:** I tried to take a page out of Pet Archer's book by submitting multiple chapters at once around the end of the month...but it didn't work out, so I'll try again in September. In the meantime...here's another chapter for your reading pleasure! :D

P.S.:—This chapter deals with the effects of solitary confinement...if anyone has to move away from the screen for a moment, feel free to do so. If not...take a good look in this chapter for my 'The Shining' reference if you're a bona fide horror film nut, and enjoy the show. Thank you and goodnight.

**Sixteen**

I ended up paying dearly for my bit of filly-time with the prison charlie. I was barely halfway to my seat when the first of tri official correctives gave me a clop to the brooko, forcing me to my knees.

"Let's see if you fight as well as you flap your jaws," he growled into my ooko.

"Up your piping," I gasped, ready to tolchock him back when a second officer swung one arm around my shiyah and the other behind my arms, pinning 'em both behind me. In between my pain and my rage, there was nowhere else for me to itty save where that officer pushed me.

"Time to go, boy," he announced, making it sound to the rest of the 'communicants' like I was going to spend half an hour in the solitary box. From the way this third corrective started like switching his shlaga from one rooker to the other, however, I knew I was headed somewhere much worse. Just one look at the litso of a few of the other malchicks told me all I needed to know.

First, I got pulled to my nogas; dragged out of the gymnasium growling like some angry sort of two-legged junkyard dog; and finally, once those officers had found a nice empty room where nobody could viddy anything through the open door, they pushed me inside and they all smecked out loud when I fell to my knees a second time. I wasn't going to let 'em get by with all that, though, because now I had a lot of fighting lessons to try out on 'em. With a quick turn and a smeck of my own, I told 'em:

"Well, come on then."

All three came running at me at once, but I was ready. I clopped the one who had clopped me first as his punishment; then I elbowed the second in the litso and, grabbing the third one's shlaga in the scuffle, gave him a good tolchock to the gulliver that knocked him back a few steps. That left me five seconds before all three of 'em came at me again, and I barely missed getting punched again before one of 'em kicked me in the ribs and the other two followed. That left a good bunch of bruises on me, because I could feel 'em like stinging me down there as I managed to stand up. Just as the officers kicked me a few times more, I found myself a wooden chair and wasted no time dratting back.

I swung and missed with that chair about once or twice, but on the third go-round, I slammed it down on that second officer's gulliver. I tolchocked him out real good in a pile of splinters, and so I brought it down again on his knees for good measure. What was left of that chair got slammed into the first officer's brooko, and so then I made him double over in his own pain for a few minootas. I tried taking a swing at the third officer, but that was when he found his shlaga and tolchocked me on the knee with it, and so whilst I was on the floor and like twisting in my own pain, the first officer got a hold of himself and soon afterward got a hold of me.

He twisted my arm so hard that what was left of my wooden chair fell out of my rookers, and he made me fall to my knees a third time and stay there. That was when the third official corrective pulled out a waiting pair of handcuffs and made sure I had my rookers behind my back at last. All I could do now was stay there like some sad ashamed sort of malchick and watch 'em call some other officers for help, and once they were there, for them to carry me into the solitary box and leave me there until they saw fit to pull me out. That didn't stop my rasoodock from working at full speed, though. While all of the officers' droogs came along and hauled me away for safe-keeping, I wondered if maybe it would have been a dobby sort of idea to have knocked 'em all out and gone straight to the computer room, or some other lovely veshch like that. That might have prepared me for whatever duel or bitva I ran myself into later, and so like helped me to learn to be a better fighter.

In the meantime, it was definitely the solitary box for me, and once I had those handcuffs taken off, into the solitary box I went without a single slovo's worth of resistance. None of those official correctives govoreeted a slovo to me, either...but then again, I didn't expect 'em to. They all hated my guttiwuts and I hated 'em right back, so really, what would have been the point of all that? Once they had shut the door behind me and gone off on their merry little ways, I kept myself busy for a while by peering through the window at all the lewdies below in the yard.

These were more like staff members than naughty little malchicks like yours truly, but I could still watch 'em go back and forth painting up thin spots on the fences and like cementing up cracks in the buildings' foundations and all that cal. They would want this mesto to look its best for the big big Police Visit, and so they would have to do whatever repairs were necessary now so that there would not be no trouble later on. I watched 'em come and go until I started feeling a malenky bit bored, and then I thought it might be a good idea to take a little gooly around my cell until some officer or another decided to come back and let me out.

"Thirty minutes," I reminded myself, limping in slow laps around my cell and like humming some 'Welcome to the Jungle' by Guns N' Roses in the meantime. "Thirty malenky minootas, Mr. Kaiser, Sir. They'll be back before you know it, you'll viddy..."

I counted about ten or eleven trips around the cell before I got bored of that, too. Was it just my imagination, or was it getting an itsy bitsy bit too warm in here? I didn't want to think about that right now. I wanted to keep a clear rasoodock and stay strong until I slooshied those officers come back. And so, I went off towards the door and peered through the malenky window there, hoping to viddy at least dva or tri lewdies ittying off here and there to sweep the floors or some other veshches to make the inside look neat and tidy. What I saw instead was a bright, bolshy empty space at an angle, completely quiet and like lacking of any staff members or malenky prestoopnicks returning from their 'services'.

Where the hell did everyone go? Was this some sort of little joke that the Prison Charlie thought up to have a smeck at me? What time was it out there? They would have to come back sometime. Those things usually lasted an hour or so, and that meant they would all start trailing back to their cells. This wasn't like those old-timey services where they had to spend almost all day like praying and listening to scrippy-tures. Sooner or later those services would end, and then they would have to feed us juvenile offenders, myself included. They wouldn't keep me here all day now, would they...?

I took a deep breath or two, and once again tried to clear my rasoodock. This was so damned _gloopy_. I'd been by myself in my cell before, and I'd never had any troubles with that because there was always someone goolying back and forth to keep one glazzie on all of us at all times. It was almost too funny the way I was acting. It was funny enough for me to smeck out loud. The sound of my smecking echoed off the walls, and so I just smecked a bit louder.

Clear rasoodock? I _didn't_ have a clear rasoodock. How could I, when I was stuck in this box by myself? How long had it been since they put me in here? Five minootas? Ten? Or had it just been odin or dva, and would I have to spend _many_, many more on my own until I heard those three clops and the order to show them my rookers so that they could like cuff them behind my back?

This was just like my stay in the hospital all those months ago. No...this was much worse than the hospital. At least back there, I had the TV set to watch, and all those staff members checking in on me at half-past the hour, every hour. Down here...who knew when those officers were coming back, if they decided to come back at all? 

No. No, I couldn't lose it in this room. I had to find a way to keep my rasoodock off of all this somehow. What I needed was a book, maybe. A nice, bolshy book with a very long raskazz inside would help me. Was there anyone around who could get it for me? If not, then maybe they might slooshy me like shouting through the door, and so come over to help me out. I would have to try and viddy what happened. I kept that idea in mind as I goolied over to the door, peered through that window panel covered with unbreakable plastic, and finally clopped on it a few times with my fist to try and get someone's attention.

"Hello?" _Thud-thud-thud. _ "Hello! Is somebody out there?" _Bang-bang-bang. _ "Can anybody hear me?"

I looked hard to viddy if anyone was coming, but just like before, all the hallways were empty. That would teach me to start like wearing a watch from now on, so at least in the future, I could know how much longer everyone would be in one mesto before they came back to the other. On the other hand, where the hell would I find a watch? Could I go up to one of the wardens and ask for it? Would they even consider giving it to me, or would they just smeck in my face and refuse to hand something over that could easily be turned into a homemade weapon?

My rasoodock was starting to feel hazy now, like somebody had shived it open and packed it with cotton one rookerful at a time. What would I do in here until someone came back, if it was just really me and this metal bench by the narrow window? It was too bad I didn't have a baseball, or any other sort of ball that I could have thrown against the wall and kept my rasoodock occupied with. They always had those in the prisoner and isolation films...so why not one for me, too? 

It was then that I started to feel a bitsy bit bezoomny at being left alone. It wasn't fair for any of 'em to go off and forget about me. I'd only tolchocked that one officer hard enough to knock him out, not to do any lasting harm. What right did any of 'em have, then, to just gooly off and forget I was in here? That thought buzzed around in my gulliver as I did twelve more laps around my cell, this time not limping, and after that I went back to my door, and after that I shouted a bit louder so that they would hear me nice and clear if they hadn't before.

"Hey! Hey, you people out there! Has it been half an hour yet?" I gave that door a few good kicks just to hear what it sounded like. "Somebody answer me, all right? I know you're there! I know you're out there, with your cameras and your correctives and all that cal! Say something, why don't you?"

I didn't hear a single slovo in response, and neither did I viddy anyone coming through the doorways or up the stairs or into the hallways. What I did notice was this like sinking feeling deep inside me, almost as though I might starve to death in this room and nobody would ever know until long after it had happened. Would they see how I'd tried to mounch on my own fingers before I finally snuffed it, and would there be nothing left to say I was there but the trails of red red krovvy on the floor and windows and doors? That thought alone started to make me feel real poogly all of a sudden. I felt like there was this bolshy great monster waiting just around the corner, ready to mounch me up and swallow me down once it was sure there were no lewdies left to slooshy my creeching and maybe even rescue me.

After a few minutes of letting this idea rattle around in my gulliver, I started to hit both sides of my door with both of my rookers, bang-bang-bang, and I kept it up until at last, I viddied an official corrective coming across the room. Not wanting to be ignored, I went on bang-bang-bang some more until I could be sure they were coming up the stairs and to my door. Only when I watched them goolying towards me did I stop my banging, and after I'd let myself breathe for a minoota or two to stop the pound-pounding of my heart, that was when I heard the order for myself to turn around and show them my rookers through the hole in the door.

"You won't hear me argue!" I almost squeaked, actually like loving the cold feeling around my wrists as they put the handcuffs on and snapped 'em shut. It was time for me to leave that solitary box at last, and so enjoy a bit of free and fresh air before the prestoopnicks' lunch.


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's Note:** Four more chapters until the halfway point...are you ready, my little droogies? ;) I certainly hope you are, because there's a lot more to be seen here before the playtime ends! To that effect...I'm seeing this character cast a little too often as the evil ex of Mary Sue, and I'm seeing Marty cast a little too often as Alex's evil ex (when HE lured HER into fooling around and then dumped her), so...I can't help but wonder, what would happen if those two characters got together? Anybody wanna find out...? Let me know in the comment box!

P.S. My thanks to Nova Sinfonia and Gilded Butterfly for leaving some much-needed feedback. Toby thanks you, Charlie thanks you, Joel thanks you, Nick thanks you, Leo thanks you, Billyboy thanks you...and I thank you again! Welcome aboard! :D

–**Weasley**

**Seventeen**

I just about creeched for radosty when I realized that every veshch in the detention center was just the same when I left the solitary box as when they first got me into it. I had worried for one malenky instant that I might viddy all the official correctives were dead and gone; that all the other malchicks had disappeared; and that I was now like living amongst new molodoy prestoopnicks because thirty years had passed me by instead of just thirty minootas. I had felt terrified that I might not have aged a day as well, almost like some eppy-sode of the Twilight Zone. Once I could take a few smots around and a few deep breaths besides, it was then that I stopped feeling all poogly and nervous for the worst to happen to me.

I passed my three new droogs in the hallway and viddied no clear change in 'em, and so I figured there would probably be no change in myself, either. I went back to my cell with something like relief floating around in my rasoodock, along with the messel that since everything in here was the exact same way it was thirty minootas ago, no doubt everyone and everything back at home would be the same, too...? I didn't normally have malenky messels about home, but when I did, they didn't make me feel all that dobby.

For one, Little Brother Liam wouldn't be an itsy bitsy bit of a baby when I got there, if I managed to get there at all. He'd be very close to goolying and govoreeting all on his own, even if he wasn't so dobby on his nogas and his slovos were just jibber-jabber. He might not even want to be carried around no more and itty just about everywhere by goolying, if I'd estimated his age right, that is. And if he neither remembered my litso nor knew the shoom of my goloss no more, what would I do next?

I had thought before that Meggie and Em would be there to remind him...but now, some ugly new idea had invaded my rasoodock and would not leave it, no matter how hard I tried to focus on any nicer messels about home sweet flat. What if home wasn't there any more...? I could count on one rooker the many times we'd had to change flats to avoid any crackdowns by the rozzes. We'd also had to check into a few run-down motels about three or four times in my jeezny, because Em's eemya had made the prostitution list in the State rozz-shop, and there were quite a few lewdies who wanted to be the one to lovet her in the act of like romancing the vecks for some pretty polly.

What if, after all I was about to do to get myself and my droogs out of this detention center and into the rozz-shop, I returned home to find that home was no longer there? What if, instead of viddying Meggie welcome me back or slooshying Em question me about my sudden reappearance, I ended up like finding a rookerful of strangers living there? What if they also had no idea where my family had gone, leaving me to wander the city in search of them?

I didn't want to find out they'd left, not so soon after I'd escaped this mesto to try and get back to 'em. I knew my family's traveling habits, though, and so if I did, I'd have to find some way to live with it. That messel stayed fresh in my rasoodock as I went alongside the other malchicks to lunchtime, all the while taking malenky bites at my resolve and whispering all sorts of baddiwad slovos into my ooko. It stayed there as I did my best to enjoy a plateful of chicken and rice and breathe easier than I'd done in the solitary box. It made my rasoodock twist and turn as I cleaned up my room for inspections after-lunch, and once the right lewdie had come, checked off a load of malenky boxes on a clipboard, and finally left me on my oddy-knocky, it made me very nearly creech into my podooshka.

There was a lot that could have happened at home in eight months or less. Other than the merzky streets below, our flat was the second-most dangerous mesto in the entire city because it was where all the derelicts tended to move in and live out their jeeznies. It was the one mesto where any baddiwad veshch on Bog's green earth could happen, and the one mesto where a lot of baddiwad happened every nochy. If it wasn't the rozzes getting into fire-fights with their State-issued legal pooshkas, then it could be dva or more vecks or damas horribly drunk on the old firegold and like shooting each other with their illegal ones. If it wasn't a mess of drunkies living under the same roof, it could be a mess of lewdies prodding themselves with the hypodermics and finding other ways to go into the land besides through the old moloko-plus. What if one of 'em had attacked Em, Meggie, Liam, or all three since I'd been gone? What if that attack had made 'em all snuff it, and left me on my oddy-knocky as an orphan...?

I did creech this time, and definitely not into my podooshka as I'd hoped and planned. They could probably hear me all the way down the hall, if they slooshied hard enough...but I didn't care. I didn't know how well I could wait out those two days until the Big Big Visit. Would I just get even more bezoomny because those thirty minootas in the solitary box had done something to my gulliver? Maybe something in my rasoodock had like snapped whilst I was in there, and I hadn't started to notice the results until now. Maybe it was that feeling of the dark, angry monster around the corner that had got me thinking these messels. Maybe it warned me that something could easily go wrong during the Visit, and that none of these rozzes would want me coming along if I said or did anything they didn't like.

It also said that I might never go home if that turned out to be true, but worse still, that my three remaining enemies would never get the punishment that they deserved. I might never have the chance to give that Miss Perfect Lydia her horrorshow new Glasgow Smile, and I wouldn't get the chance to grind my sabog into her brooko so that she would creech worse and permanently disfigure herself. I might never have the chance to smash a deck chair over that gloopy teddy-loving shoot's gulliver, and watch him go through the same risk of concussions as yours truly. I might never get the chance to shove that complainer's gulliver into a very very deep sink, and keep it there until he'd breathed in too much aqua to ever live again. I might never see that dim litso again, or ask him why on Bog's green earth he used that oozy when he could have had any other fighting tool in the world.

And most of all...if I never got out as soon as I wanted, I might never get my chance to pay _him_ back for what he did to me. If I ended up like staying here until it was time for me to go to the stripy hole, I might never get my revenge. That was the one veshch I knew I could never do without, not until I'd taken care of it on my oddy-knocky. It was the one messel I had kept safe in my rasoodock all these months, and it helped me to remember everything else I hoped to get right along with it.

I wanted to itty off into the bolshy black nochy and breathe the cold winter air just like I'd done for so many winters, but could not do no more because of me being locked away in this detention center mesto. I wanted to know that there would be no like demanding and bossy lewdies telling me where to come and go to, and for how long, and for what like they did here. I wanted to have my pick of the streets, and not have to worry about where it was coming from or how much I would find.

I wanted to smot some stranger in the glazzie and know that he thought me to be poogly, and not just another gloopy creature to smeck at. I wanted to use my nozh in a one-on-one fight, and come out the winner like I did long before _he_ showed up and took it all away from me. I wanted to punish that mouthy soomka for breaking my shaika up and like scattering us between several counties.

_I wanted all of my droogs back._

I missed Joel, oh yes. Those other lewdies could lie and pretend that I cared for nobody else but myself, but hell and damnation, _I missed Joel_. Even if he did have trouble punishing the devotchkas sometimes, he still knew how to make us all laugh. If we hadn't been split up at all, he would have been right here and like helping me to feel better, not rotting underground with the worms. Come to think of it, all the others would have been right here with me, because I missed 'em all just as much.

_Leo._

_Nick._

_Toby and Charlie._

Were any of 'em doing all right without the rest of us there, or were they trapped somewhere in a solitary box just as I had been? Were they getting enough to mounch and peet every day? Did the wardens and official correctives let them go to sleep on time? I'd never asked 'em that, even though we'd sent dozens of S-mails back and forth. Maybe I should have. What if I never got the chance, and that none of us were ever noticed by the rozzes? What if—

"Shut it, ya bastard!"

I made myself stop thinking with that before it got to be too much for me. I had to like shout it out of me so that I would hold it inside me no longer. If I let myself and my rasoodock go under; then the wardens and official correctives would be smecking behind their rookers and believing that they'd finally gotten to me. They would have loved to viddy me mumbling to myself and like feeling all poogly that I might never get back to my old droogies, or that they'd somehow never come back to me. Sadly for them, I just couldn't have that.

I wouldn't let myself go under that easily. I _couldn't_. They were all counting on me out there—my shaikas old and new, my Em, my Little Brother and Sister. They'd all suffered enough without me, maybe even _because_ of me—and so I had to be the one to put an end to it. I had to be the one to get us all out of our troubles. I couldn't get any of that done if I let myself go bezoomny in this place. I would have to think of something dobby, anything that could help as a mental block against all of the baddiwad veshches floating around in my gulliver. Before I could help them, first and foremost, I would have to help myself somehow.

For that purpose, I shut my glazzies real tight and tried to imagine what they all might look like in a few years. I could viddy Em the clearest, because there were no strange vecks waiting outside her door for a turn or a trick from her. She was also out of that restaurant and into a like comforting sort of rabbit, answering all these phone calls and type-typing on a keyboard and all that cal, because there was no Jerome around to say yes or no. I could viddy Meggie going to and coming from skolliwoll as usual, but not without a brand-new change of platties and a malenky curl in her voloss besides. I could viddy Liam in the rookers of a like loving, friendly dama working in the nursery, one step up from making one of the other whores watch him for the day. That seemed like a fairly dobby start to me, so I kept on going up from there.

I could viddy Daniel, Carlo, and Allen next, all three of 'em working away like they done in the Detention Center's front yard, but then they were in some sort of nice, flip new uniforms and hauling many lewdies away into their autos with their rookers chained up behind 'em. There was a chance I could viddy 'em get like that a few days from now, if the rozzes did the right veshch and brought us all into their like training programs for the learning and the arresting. There was indeed a chance, and with it I could go straight in along with 'em and start with the arresting, too.

Then I tried to viddy my old shaika standing there safe and sound, but try as I might, I could not make myself do it. I could barely imagine Leo or Nick as part of the rozz-shop, let alone their litsos or the colors of their uniforms. Neither could I imagine Toby or Charlie there, because my rasoodock could only have 'em trapped inside their own padded white cells, separated from each other and handed malenky little pills to make 'em doze off faster during the nochy, never mind 'em going through all sorts of treatment and like questioning by the docs during the day.

That sent another wave of pain crash-crashing through my gulliver, making me want to find the nearest gloopy veck or dama outside my door and tolchock 'em everywhere and all around until I either felt a bit better, or until I managed to knock 'em out with my fisties. I was trapped here. There was no other veshch for me but to do a lot more waiting until the two days finally came to an end, and probably no other way out for me and mine except for like watching what would happen to us all when those rozzes came. We were all trapped here, and so there would be no leaving for any of us 'til the Big  
Big Visit. Until then, I could only watch my fisties clench up, and then viddy that one malenky, filthy word of 'EUNUCH' appear on my arm in those white scars, marking my time in this detention center as surely as it had in all those corrective schools of old.


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's Note:** If this character ever got his hands on chapter 21, he'd either be laughing his head off or wondering how much Alex paid the writer to lie about him. That being said, I figure I have a right to remain skeptical about this ending, including everything that Billy's going to say about it. Anywho, here's chapter 18, y'all.

**Eighteen**

Now, I know there might be some lewdies out there who would want to read about some happy veshches right about now, such as yours truly like govoreeting it up with some randomized devotchka after randomly visiting a coffee shop I knew nothing about; ignoring every part of my personality and trying to play the perfect hero; or else magically ceasing to be myself entirely and like whining for some litso-less dama to come into my cell, start making all of my pishcha by hand, and pop out only boy babies whenever I platched and threw tantrums loud enough for one to come along. Well, _stop right there_, please.

I'm not going to lie just to make myself look all sladky and dobby to you and yours. Why on Bog's green, green earth would I want to do that, I wonder? All my previous slovos have been the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Why, then, would I decide to start like calling myself some malenky Romeo Montague waiting to happen? To make every devotchka on this island magically forget how I'd attack 'em and never, _ever_ think twice about it? To lure 'em into my flat and trick 'em into believing I'd give 'em all sorts of presents if they didn't report me to the rozzes on the spot? To sweep all my twenty-to-ones under the rug, or funnier still, to lead you into like insisting I did it because I had no sharp to call my own?

_Other_ malchicks may try to claim such veshches later on, oh _yes_, but don't you believe a single, solitary slovo, because the truth is so much better than fiction. First and foremost, _no_ Nadsat on these shores ever had a sharp to themselves in a dobby way, because they were always much more focused on raping the devotchkas they came across, and they would never stop raping 'em no matter how much they blubbered for mercy, _and_ they wouldn't ever give a rat's yarbles if she wanted something dobby or sladky in return.

And secondly, I would have to go through a lot worse in my jeezny before I could even think about like finding anything better. How worse, one might ask? I'll tell you—those rozzes pulled up just as all of us delinquent juveniles were finishing off our breakfast bowls. No sooner had we swallowed our last mouthfuls and put our trays back in order than they ordered us all outside at once, hiding our glazzies from the sunlight and meeting with a long row of vecks standing in front of the flagpole.

I didn't bother looking too long on the five or six rozzes that were there in their uniforms, because they all seemed just about the same to me—probably on the youngish side, awkward, and either nervous about being around us malenky prestoopnicks or just plain bored. It was the lone rozz who wasn't in any sort of uniform that got my attention. Not only did he have a sort of plain blue set of platties on, he was also somewhat dark-haired like yours truly, a bit on the roughed-up side, and to top it all off, I almost swore I viddied him put a stick of Blammo into his rot and start chewing away at it. Why did he do that, I wonder...?

It might have all been just one bolshy coincidence, of course, but on the other rooker, this veck had made me just a malenky bit curious. I wished for one minoota that maybe I could have had a moment alone with this one, if just to ask a few questions such as whether or not he'd come from the East End, if he'd goolied out of some stripy hole to get himself here, and if he'd started out as nothing but some whoreson like me.

I must have smotted at that one a bit too long, though, because then he happened to smot upwards, and I very nearly swore that he'd stared me straight in the glazzies before I made myself smot away. Then I slooshied that veck start to govoreet to his unders, and I knew my time had finally come.

"Is this it, then?"

"Yes, sir. All six hundred and ninety, not counting the ten resting in the medical wing, of course."

"Good, then. Bring all the boys turning eighteen, and leave the others here."

'Leave the others'? _No_. No, there had to be some mistake. _Nobody_ had told us we had to be turning eighteen to get in. Nobody ever told me that I would be the only one old enough for this. I couldn't leave my shaika behind again, either. I _wouldn't_. Daniel, Allen, and Carlo would have to all be coming with me, or else none of us would come at all.

"_Wait_."

I viddied my shaika looking confused and like whispering to themselves, and I viddied one of those rozzes coming straight for me, but I wasn't about to let 'em slow me down.

"Mr. Officer, wait—I want to ask you something—"

"—Into the car, boy."

"But Officer, my friends—"

"—I said, _into the car_."

He took hold of my one arm and turned me around, but I wasn't done fighting yet. Instead of just following orders like a malenky gloopy shoot, I pulled in the opposite direction he'd planned for me to go and, along the way, I tried reaching for at least one of my new droogs so that we would stay together somehow. Maybe we could have even linked arms and sat down on purpose like those protesters on old Statefilm stock, them going against the State itself being like voted into office for life and all that cal.

Unfortunately, that was when two more rozzes showed up at the scene, one of 'em nudging all my new droogs away and the other grabbing my other arm so that he and his droogies could force me elsewhere. I didn't like that one malenky bit.

"_No_! Daniel! Allen! Let me go, you merzky bratchny!"

"This is the last time we say this, boy! Into the car with you!"

"Allen! Carlo, _per favore_! Come back!"

I was creeching and like thrashing around now, a veshch that both rozzes hated because I wasn't going quietly like a lot of the other malchicks. They just stared at the ground in silence as the other rozzes marched them into the backs of the police autos and trucks and all that cal, herding them off as easily as a farmer herds their sheep or cows. As for me, all they had to do was give me a hard shove away from the crowds and towards the nearest car, and after I'd almost fallen down once or twice, forced myself to get back onto my nogas, and fought for about five or six minootas to keep myself from getting pushed inside, they'd dragged me into the back of one of the larger trucks instead, them locking me in a combo harness and me using the last of my strength to try and run away.

Oh, Bog, how I'd made a lot of shoom then. I hated every last one of those rozzes and those official correctives and those wardens, all that cal they did to me and mine.

I hated the way all three of those rozzes glared at me like I was some piece of filth made to be taken out like a full trashcan, or some malenky bug made to be squished underneath their boots, or some great growling junkyard dog made to be tied up and left on its oddy-knocky.

I hated the idea that most likely, I was the only one made to wear this harness to keep myself still, because the rozzes liked some of the malchicks better than me and well enough to let 'em sit down with just a plain seat-belt to keep 'em safe.

I hated that they made me so bezoomny that I went on creeching and banging my fisties against the walls of this truck's trailer, like yelling at them to bring my shaika back to me so that we could all leave together and never viddy this detention center no more.

But most of all, I hated that I'd just lost three new droogs that were supposed to be my unbreakable new shaika, and that I'd probably never viddy 'em again just like I might never viddy all those malchicks that were once my old shaika, but that would not be with me no more. There were eight of 'em gone now, and one of those eight had snuffed it and would not be coming back, oh no, and for that all I could do was go on bang-banging my fisties against the walls and slapping my nogas onto the floor and creeching all the baddiwad slovos I knew because I could not gooly out of this truck or help any of 'em come along with me.

I had no idea how long it was that I creeched and made all of my loud shooms, because I had no watch or dobby piece of clockwork to let me know the time. Maybe it was as short a bit of time as five minootas, or maybe it was as long a piece of time as fifteen or twenty. I had no idea what I might have done after I'd finished all my creeching or what I might not have done, because then and there I fell into a sort of breathing and like huffing fit of silence, not really wanting to move, smot, or slooshy to anything or anybody that might be interested.

Instead, somehow I let myself go quiet and stop like talking or creeching about what I thought of all these State-owned lewdies, and I narrowly felt my glazzies sort of roll backwards a malenky bit into my gulliver, causing me to smot up at the ceiling in a sort of daze and very nearly pretend that this ceiling was the most rotten of veshches I had ever viddied in my entire jeezny.

In my rasoodock, I imagined that I could reach up just far enough and grab that ceiling with my bared rookers, only to tear it off all the edges of this truck one corner at a time, and then twist it and turn it around and around until I'd fashioned myself a brand-new nozh from it, and then use that nozh to cut myself loose before using it on whichever lewdies yeckated this truck, along with slipping it through the key-hole and like setting myself free to go get all my droogies back odin by odin. I also imagined that I wasted no bits of time going after every single warden and official corrective that dared to get in my way, taking up my nozh and like shiving up their gorlos real horrorshow so that the floor and the walls were just about drowned in all their red red krovvy. That must have kept my rasoodock from snapping in half somehow, because it was somewhere around that time that both my rasoodock and my plott wandered off into the big big Dreamland, though not with any dobby or lovely sneeties to ease off what had happened to me and mine.

By the time I had woken up again, I found that the truck had stopped in front of some restaurant that I didn't recognize, and that the dark-hared veck who I'd viddied chewing the Blammos had both of the truck doors wide open, smotting down at me.

* * *

**A/N: ** I got the idea for Billy's odd expression by remembering a scene of killer acting in the Shining, in which the killer himself (Jack Nicholson) also has that odd stare with his eyes half going into the back of his head before he's convinced by a malevolent spirit, Delbert Grady (also Alex's dad, LOL) to permanently 'punish' his wife and son by killing them so that they won't make him leave his job at the empty hotel. Because I like to think that Jack Torrance could have been one of Billy's ancestors, I just had to put that in.

To that effect, moreover, because Tom and Billy were both seen chewing gum in this film, my original idea was to have Tom be Billy's long-absent father. However, thanks to the intervention of a good and faithful droogie and the realization that this would just create an incestuous situation further down the road, I decided to scrap this idea and just make Tom into a sort of mentor instead. Let me know what you think,

**Weasley**


	19. Chapter 19

**Author's Note: ** I'm still alive, and still very much in action. Are you ready for another chapter...?

**Nineteen**

"I see you're awake."

That veck had a set of unblinking glazzies on him, and they had to be the coldest sort of glazzies I'd ever viddied. There was something about 'em that made me shiver and sit up straight without thinking twice about it.

"And harnessed in too, eh? How many of my boys did you have to hurt for that, then?"

"Maybe they tried to hurt me first," I tried to snap back, only for it to come out as an uneasy mumble. As if to answer me, that veck just smiled, almost as though my mumblings somehow made him happy.

"Well, never mind all that, boy," he told me, like reaching down to undo the various straps tying yours truly down. "Here you are and here I am, and it's time the both of us had a bit of a rest."

"I already had a rest," I muttered, trying to undo one of the straps on my oddy-knocky, but not doing too well.

"Rest stop, then," he corrected himself, freeing my right arm and then starting to work on my left. "You'll be wanting a piss or a crap then, I guess?"

"I might."

"And something to eat, no doubt?"

"Depends. What time is it?"

I watched him smot downward at his timepiece; then turn back to me.

"Almost twelve o'clock."

_Horse cal._

"So what, then—was I out for four hours?"

"Looks like it, boy."

_Double horse cal._ No wonder I'd started to get the feeling of something like biting away inside of my brooko. I had to reach down and lift up my legs one at a time, stretching 'em out just to be sure I hadn't slept on 'em wrong. Only after I'd done that did the veck with the cold glazzies undo the rest of the straps, and then move back just enough for me to stand up. I'd barely made it a few steps when something like a very, very sharp sort of nozh shoved itself through my tick-tocker, and even though not one lewdie was close enough to me to shive me up in that way, not even the cold-eyed veck, it still hurt.

Allen, Carlo, and Daniel were out of my reach now, just as surely as almost everyone in my first shaika and my family back home. I was completely _alone_.

"What's the problem, boy? You're not hurt. Open your eyes and come out of there."

I must have winced from the pain a moment ago, not that this veck cared. I opened my glazzies again, all right, but I didn't leave the truck. What I did do was glare right back at him, if only to viddy how he liked it.

"Just 'cause I'm not bleeding on the ground doesn't mean I'm not hurting," I spat, my goloss not shaking at all now. "All my friends are _gone_!"

"Just because your friends are gone doesn't mean you won't survive," that veck snapped back, reaching in to grab my arm. "You can always make new ones—"

"-No, I _can't_!"

I dodged that veck on purpose and tried to run past him, only to fall out of the truck and scrape my litso and rookers against the blacktop because I'd misjudged where I was. I found myself lying on one side before that veck had my arm and forced me to stand again, and then I felt a very sharp like stinging on my right cheek and on the palms of my rookers, because no doubt I must have hurt myself real horrorshow. No sooner did he have me back on my nogas than he steered me into the waiting rookers of two other rozzes, most likely the two vecks who yeckated this truck in the first place.

"Take him inside. I'll get the first-aid kit."

I didn't want to go inside, not even for some pishcha or a trip to the malenky malchick's room. I wanted to run back to that detention center and get my droogs back. I knew there was no getting out of this mesto because I had no idea how to drive a truck, though, and I also didn't know which direction to run in so that I might eventually get back to my poor abandoned droogies.

Instead, I went with those two other rozzes into the rest stop that stood a short distance away, which had a sign that read "Sweeney's" in bolshy golden lettering hanging down in front. I thought for one minoota that we might have reached Em's restaurant by chance, and that I might have been able to viddy her at her rabbit and give her the somewhat dobby news of my release. Then I remembered how our Sweeney's wasn't found on one side of any busy highways, and so I then thought it might be a while before I got to govoreet such veshches to her proper.

"You there!"

In the meantime, one of those two rozzes had flashed a badge at the nearest busboy, who had picked up his pen and notepad without a shoom of resistance.

"Four specials for us and our two friends, eh?"

That busboy just nodded and went straight to his rabbit of placing orders, which very nearly made me smeck as those rozzes brought me to the nearest sink and made me stand very very still. I wondered for a moment if they planned to tolchock me, or maybe even shove my rooker against that sink's hard edge, but then one of 'em grabbed up a rookerful of papery towels and ran 'em under the hot water so that he might cheest some of the red krovvy and malenky bits of gravel off my poor scraped litso and rookers. A few swipes across was enough for that, of course, and once that rozz added some soap, I felt like I might be a little less in pain on the inside even though my scrapes were still like stinging a lot on the outside. I would not yet name either of these two rozzes as my new droogies, oh _no_, but I knew a favor when I viddied it. Once that veck had cleaned me up enough, in came that veck with the icy glazzies, along with that first-aid kit he'd promised to bring in.

"Sit down over there, boy."

I viddied that there was a bolshy, plush-looking chair in one corner, so I had no problem like occupying it as I was asked. The veck with the first-aid kit had found a tube of whitish, creamy medicine inside, which he smeared onto my scrapes a malenky bit at a time, making sure to rub it in real careful. Once he'd taken care of my litso and my rookers together in that manner, he unwrapped a few bandages and covered up those scrapes so that they'd all heal real horrorshow.

I figured that maybe the Chief of the rozzes wouldn't want me smotting like I'd just been in a serious sort of bitva, and that my stinging had stopped besides, so I had no problem with 'em like fixing me up and making me smot dobby again. If I showed up somewhat neat and tidy and not messed up or covered with the red red krovvy, he might get some dobby messels about me in his rasoodock to start with, and so want to help me not be some baddiwad prestoopnick no more.

Then that veck asked me to give him my arm, so without thinking, I held up the one which rooker he'd just bandaged up.

"Your other arm, boy," that cold-eyed veck told me, like pulling something else out of that first-aid kit that I wasn't sure I needed, but that I held my other arm up for anyway. I got a needle full of something orange for that, and the next veshch I remembered was pulling away after a fourth bandage had been slapped onto me.

"_Ouch_! What the fuckin' hell did you do _that_ for?"

That third rozz just smiled down at me again, and this time, I swore I felt a shiver go up and down my poor poogly spine.

"We've got to keep track of our new recruits somehow, don't we, boy?" he answered, staring me square into the glazzies like he could somehow viddy right through me.

"What, you mean like some sort of tracking thingy?" I demanded, but not without that like shivering veshch becoming just a malenky bit stronger. "You...you knew I thought about running, didn't you? How did you do that, I wonder? What's going on?"

I was rambling as though I'd turned into some gloopy shoot, and all three of these rozzes ponied that just as well as I did. Two of 'em glanced straight at each other and started smecking behind their rookers, while Mr. Cold-Glazzies leaned in a bit closer to me as he started putting all those other first-aid veshches away that I didn't need.

"I made it my job a long time ago to read the faces of all my prisoners, boy," that veck told me, clicking the case shut with one rooker.

"I can tell when they're afraid, when they've got something to confess to me, when they're angry and out to get someone...even a combination of the previous three. The way you glanced to one side when you thought about running away from us, then—that wasn't very subtle, what you had on your mind. If it had only been one of us watching you, you would have tried it and probably succeeded, then."

He said all of these veshches just like they were facts, leaving me to want to scratch my head and start like staring at them as though I couldn't believe a slovo of what this one just govoreeted to me. So this veck knew how to read other lewdies' litsos, did he? It sounded like some real dobby veshch to begin with, but then I knew that, if all this veck had said turned out to be real, it would also mean he could have viddied my escape plans long before I even figured 'em out inside the safety of my rasoodock. There would be no running from these three, not with this tracking device safe inside my wrist.

"So...so I'm stuck, then, am I?" I almost laughed, hardly like daring to believe it. "What would;d happen to me if I did run away?"

"The orange capsule might be activated to dissolve straight into your bloodstream and poison you," that veck went on govoreeting, "But I really wouldn't try and test that theory. You and I are gonna have to get along from now on, then. We'd better start now, eh?"

_Hard not to, when it's this or poison,_ I thought to myself, watching without one more slovo as that veck held out his rooker to me like some sort of new droogie.

"Tom Conroy, at your service."

I stared at him and at those two other rozzes for one minoota; then put my own rooker down into his for a handshake.

"Call me Billy." 

* * *

**A/N: ** Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and...HAPPY FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY! (**toasts in moloko)**


	20. Chapter 20

**Author's Note:** Guys...I think I might just take a month and a half off from this fandom, at least where the writing is concerned. I kinda want to get back to writing for 'Repo! The Genetic Opera', and I've been away from that spot for what seems like years, so...maybe until the week of March 12, I figure I might want to lean a little on their side. I'll still be around to leave comments, though, so...hope that's okay. Your faithful (and TRULY humble droog),

-Weasley-

**Twenty**

_There's to be no talking your way out of this one, 'Tony'_, I told myself as they marched me to a table sitting dead center in the dining area. _Once they get a hold of you, you're as good as got._

I knew I couldn't run away from these three vecks, because Tom would just turn on that poison plug and snuff me out. I also knew I had no way to send any more S-mails to any of my droogs at their respective detention centers or sanatoriums, not just because I had no malenky Alec-tron-ics to call my own, but also because I had the feeling these three wouldn't want me govoreeting or like typing to 'em no more.

I didn't even bother wondering whether or not I could talk to any of the vecks surrounding me about my loneliness, because it was like I already knew they would just smeck out loud and roll their glazzies at whatever slovos I managed to spit out. It was very nearly like I had no choice at all, except to nod my gulliver and tell 'em "Yes Sir, yes Sir, three bags full, Sir,' or else just smile and flash my zoobies like the dobby malenky malchick I wasn't, and use some starry rights to remain silent and all that cal.

I could still find my way around these gloopy veshches, though, because even though these vecks had my plott entirely in their possession, there was _no_ way for 'em to break into my rasoodock because that veshch was still mine all mine. I could think whatever filthy messels I wanted to think up there, and get myself a round of horrorshow smecks without any of 'em like finding out about it. And so, I guess that it soon came to be how, in the middle of three vecks taking out their nappy-kins and like preparing for some sort of bolshy feast, I gave 'em all my best lopsided grin and followed their lead. However, at the same time exactly, I imagined taking up my fork and digging around inside their litsos until I'd taken out all six of their glazzies put together, and viddied some krovvy flow besides. How sweet it was.

"Should just be a few minutes more, boy," Tom said to me, giving me that starry cold look again. "Bet you're close to fainting from hunger then, eh?"

"Oh, _yes_, Sir, absolutely _famished_ I am, Sir," I pretended to mumble in return, but not without like thinking, 'How I'd love to viddy all three of you having to starve for once instead of me.'

I paid only half as much attention to their chats that came afterward as I normally might, because they weren't all that interesting to me just yet. While these three vecks went on about the weather and rowdy millicents and the like, I folded my rookers together and, under a malenky disguise of silence, imagined each of 'em being struck by lightning, choked off by avalanches of stones and snow, brutally shived to death with all sorts of sharp nozhes, and so on and so forth. It wasn't until our four plates of pishcha arrived that I finally allowed all my naughty messels to go silent, because now there were such servings as I'd never viddied at home in the whole of my jeezny.

These line cooks had taken care to bring us a mighty rookerful of tasty veshches today—roasted beef, turkey, and smoked Gouda on wheat bread and formed into two sandwiches each; a bolshy spoonful of new taters sliced and drizzled in butter and parsley bits; a dobby slice of strawberry pie for the sweet. We had all of that one bite at a time, and slowly filled ourselves up whilst like washing down each few mouthfuls with sips of a diet soda. The more I enjoyed my share of the pishcha, the more I realized that suddenly, I could have entered myself into something truly _glorious_.

I could not have mounched or peeted half so well as part of a shaika or some grunt of a restaurant. The most I could have bought with a week's wages would have been a small take-out order for the flat, or else six malenky cans each of the fruits and the veg. I could also not have had this in my starry detention center home, because our servings back there were somewhat malenky at a few spoonfuls apiece for mystery meat and stews and all that cal. This was something very very different, and to me different would be perfect. There was a chance here, a _chance_, that told me I might never have to itty off into dreamland with an empty brooko ever again. If these vecks could get themselves pishcha like this whenever they wanted, well...how much would a molodoy prestoopnick like yours truly end up taking home?

Would it be enough to support myself and the other three waiting for me, after we'd forced Jerome out and taken full control of ourselves? I knew I would have to find out the answer to this question by _any means necessary_. Unfortunately, it would also mean like fillying around by the rules of rozzes instead of derelicts, a fact that I already didn't like because both Tom and his two droogs in uniform smotted to be much too cold and calculating for my liking. Still, they knew how to deliver where pishcha was concerned, and such a gesture could not go unrecognized.

"Now now, that was a great idea," I said to Tom when I'd finished of the last of my taters, and all of the other three around me were like taking their final sips of the diet. "My thanks for the first full stomach I've had in ages."

"No doubt it's cooled your bad mood, then," Tom said in a near monotone sort of goloss, although I thought I could viddy him smiling just a malenky bit.

"Oh, yes, Sir, _indeed_ it has," I told Tom right back, softening my own goloss on purpose so that he might take a liking to me. "Do you get to have rations like that all the time, Sir?"

"Rations...?"

At this, Tom smiled widely and smotted off into space, but not without next govoreeting to me:

"Sometimes the State is generous to those who keep its peace."

"_Generous_?"

I wasn't so sure about all of Tom's slovos at that point. On rooker number Odin, I could very nearly swear that I'd slooshied one more piece of propaganda like I'd had long ago at the Public Skolliwoll Twelve. Tom could have been like hiding important answers from me, or else using a set of generalized slovos to throw me off whatever trail he didn't want me to viddy or use for my own traveling.

On rooker number Dva, however, maybe he had been telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth all along. Maybe I had been keeping my distance on purpose, because I didn't have a dobby idea on how to deal with him save for my pretending, and that all my like doubting had been because I didn't want to become attached to yet one more lewdie that I could get dragged away from. That had already happened two times over between myself and all nine of my droogs, and so it had to be an easy veshch to viddy as to why I would not want this to happen to me all over again.

At the same time, I had a rookerful of other messels to myself, such as if the so-called 'generosity' of the 'State' could easily be given to a lewdie one minoota, only to be ripped away from 'em the next. I didn't have to be a genius to pony how such veshches could either make or break a veck in the long run. I would have to play it safe, oh yes...but I would need to remain on my guard as well.

"Oh, yes, _indeed_ it is, Sir," I answered at last, yet still like imagining a horrible death for Tom and his droogs and wondering about my next large-scale meal at the same time.

"Might I safely assume your State would be good to me as long as I play by its rules?"

All three of those vecks had their glazzies on me now, but as always, it was Tom who did the govoreeting back to me.

"Well, boy, I guess we'll just have to find that one out, then...won't we?"

I had to keep those slovos carefully tucked away in my gulliver, because there was not much more govoreeting between the four of us as our time with this afternoon pishcha gradually came to a close. I smotted the rozzes like folding up their nappy-kins and putting 'em back on their plates odin by odin; then, as the line cooks sent some waitress out to gather 'em up, I managed to let myself get distracted long enough for a malenky peek at her litso. Her voloss was so orangeish-yellow and very nearly long enough for her to sit on it, and she didn't smot too healthy either no thanks to her skin being so pale. Given her red and white standardized uniform, it was a wonder she didn't look like some gloopy orange peppermint stick to me.

Then I happened to take a skorry glance at her tagged eemya, and then at her spotless white apron before some starry memory jumped to the forefront of my usual messels. _Miss White?_ Was this so-called 'Sonietta' really the Miss White I had viddied from my hospital room window all those months ago? What on Bog's green green earth was she doing here at a Sweeney's, and how come they had her doing something so boring as like washing the merzky dishes all day?

"Time to go, then, lads," Tom's cold goloss said, tolchocking its way through my other messels and memories and like making me obey without a slovo of protests. That was enough to settle my rasoodock down. I _might_ have wanted to spend a few minootas asking that 'Sonietta' devotchka those two questions along with where on earth her best sharp of a droog Miss Purple was hiding, but it didn't cause me any pain or like suffering to turn away from her and follow all three rozzes off to the payment place. I'd had no time whatsoever to filly around with her or let myself get attached in any way, and so I had no complaints.

I had no complaints as I watched Tom pull out some malenky black credit card and swipe it down one end of an Alec-tron-ic machine, like paying our tabs and all that cal so that the Sweeney's could make some deng and not accuse any of us of stealing. That kept up whatever low profile he'd wanted us to have, and it kept the glazzies of the workers on him and his droogs instead of like glancing warily at me.

Neither did I have any complaints over taking one last trip to the malenky malchicks' room, goolying quietly out of that Sweeney's, and finally letting myself get strapped into those harnesses again before Tom shut those big big metal truck doors and left me all on my oddy-knocky in the back. These rozzes had taken the trouble to bring me any sort of dobby pishcha at all, and so I felt just a malenky bit that I owed them some horrorshow behavior in return instead of misbehaving or mouthing off.

Thirdly and lastly, I had no complaints in getting back onto the road, taking the second half of our journey to where the rest of the rozzes waited for us, and so like resuming my long spat upon my seat before they decided to stop the truck for good and let me get to my new home real proper. Clearing my gulliver before the big arrival was just fine to me, and so I had no problems with shutting my glazzies and spatting in the back until they decided to wake me up and take me out. I had to be ready for whatever was coming, and what better way to do that veshch than to sleep it all off?

It was only a short time later when I viddied bright, bright sunlight shining straight into my glazzies, waking me up on the spot and showing me Tom and the two other rozzes standing together just beyond the doorway of our truck. Just behind 'em was a gravel walkway, beside which I happened to viddy a sign that read 'London Police Academy' in white lettering against a black background. The time for my thinking had ended, and the time for my like training and new education had begun.


	21. Chapter 21

**Author's Note**—Before I get started on this chapter (and before anybody else gets started reading it as well)...there's something I have to voice out loud here once and for all, because the idea that it's turning into a spooky trend is enough to keep me awake at night. Just because a person is supposedly as 'pretty' as a supermodel and has the sort of money to buy you expensive presents does _not_ mean you have to stay with them and allow them to _beat_ you, _rape_ you, and tell you every day and night that you somehow want such treatment from them because you're 'omg, so alone'.

When last I looked, that's definitely what real love isn't supposed to look like. Heck, even the somewhat stalkery vampire who watched his girlfriend sleep at night practically begged her not to throw her life away for his sake. He insisted time and time again that he _wouldn't_ turn her into a monster, and _wouldn't_ take her virginity even when she threw herself at him, so...when I see female characters in fanfiction slowly becoming isolated from their family and friends, made to defend themselves in conversation because their so-called 'boyfriends' are firing off accusing remarks at them, even having to give it up to their wrongfully-labeled 'significant others' long before they are ready or can even utter a word of consent...that is NOT romance to me.

Yes, the girl receives pretty, expensive gifts, but **only to keep her quiet, submissive, and completely unwilling to report her abuser to the police.** Yes, she thinks she absolutely adores her abuser because **he keeps hinting to her that no other boy wants her, especially after she's lost her virginity to him and is thus 'spoiled goods'. ** And yes, the girl is 100% devoted to her abuser, because it's more than hinted on **how she'll be physically harmed/killed if she ever does otherwise.** To say that this is true love is like saying an axe murderer was saving his victims by ending their lives. I really do know the difference between the two, because I know two people in my life who were affected by such heartless treatment...and because of this, I'm reporting any story that hints of graphic abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, and mind control to the moderators on this site...as well as adopting this idea into my stories, merely to show everyone how wrong and destructive it truly is. Thank you and goodnight.

==Weasley==

**Twenty-One**

The way they called us all out of these trucks and piled us into the Big Big Processing Room, a malchick could think they were herding sheep or cattle or some other sort of livestock like that. Hard to think of 'em as anything else, because I could viddy nice and clear that we'd been gathered into certain herds of humans according to our detention center colors.

There were about ten or eleven that got pulled out of Liverpool Local, because they dressed 'em up all in red over there. Half a dozen from Northampton stood over in one corner, and we called 'em the yellow-jackets because of the mustard-colored platties they had on. Cambridge brought in seven and Cardiff nine, and a lewdie could easily pick out one from the other on account of Cambridge's inky black uniforms versus Cardiff's snowy white. Oh, there were so many others in so many different shades and tones, too, loads of 'em from mestos I'd never even heard about until today. Chellovecks and malchicks together in blue and green and brown and orange, some of 'em looking like they could snuff you out with their glazzies whilst a rookerful of others just smotted at no one and no veshch at all, almost like they'd lost their rasoodocks ages ago and couldn't be bothered to find 'em.

I could have easily kept my attention on these molodoy prestoopnicks for a while, if only to wonder to myself what on Bog's earth could be like spinning around and around inside their gullivers. Anything could be going on in there, because sometimes there was just no telling with any strangers around you. But after a minoota or two, I didn't pay 'em any mind no longer. It was the most bolshy total from the East End Correctional that caught my glazzies at last, because they'd brought in a whopping _thirteen_ Nadsats, and all in their finest charcoal gray platties, too. In fact, whatever special malenky veshch that popped into my gulliver as I watched 'em just now, it soon lead me to itty off to their side to claim unity and solidarity for the hereafter.

"Wotcher playin' at, four-three-one-zero?"

One of those security guards had a sort of shoomy, gromky goloss to him, and he definitely didn't think twice about using it on me.

"Back to the Durham recruits with you, eh?"

"Beg pardons, sir," I started in on him, "Durham wasn't ever my real home."

"Well, London ain't mine either, but y' don't see me breaking ranks now, do you?"

"_Please_, sir."

I kept my goloss level, but I also gave that veck my best unhappy glazzies so as to shame him into like letting me have my way, maybe.

"I was born in the East End, and I lived in the East End close to all of my life. Can't I at least room with all of 'em, or something? It's like a sickness for home, see?"

"Conroy?"

Tom, who had been viddying all with an empty sort of smot on his litso, just waved a rooker our way as though to tell us, "Go on, then." I half expected the veck to do much differently to the likes of me, because he'd gone and held me back before...yet there he was now, like sending me off without a slovo's worth of resistance. Ah, well...it wasn't really running away if I just wandered off to another group, now, was it? Still, after the way he'd reined me in to begin with, I couldn't help but wonder to myself why he'd suddenly changed his mind.

"Much obliged, Tom," I told him in my happiest sort of goloss as I sat myself down beside all these charcoal-colored uniforms. It was much, much better to be here rather than off with Durham or Cambridge or Liverpool or all that cal, because I ponied the litsos of the East End malchicks a lot better than I ponied any others in this building. They had the telltale smot of getting tolchocked in the brooko one time too many, and also the litsos of lewdies who knew how to go on about their business without any first-rate pishcha, like the stuff of Sweeney's not on their plates each and every nochy. Yes, I knew all of those veshches like I knew the backs of my rookers, and so also might those malchicks come to know me. I had quite a long way to go before I could viddy anything like that happen, though, so help me Bog.

"Should have stayed over there, Durham," one of the East End malchicks snapped at me once I'd joined 'em. "Back with the other fancy nancies, where y' belong."

"I never had nothin' fancy in all of my jeezny, brother," I joked back at him, "And I don't know any Nancy-girl devotchkas, either. Want to know how I got this uniform?"

"Cambridge recruits, step forward, please!"

I was one breath away from like repeating myself just in case none of 'em heard me, when some short malchick from around the middle took one smot at me and then smecked out loud.

"I know how y' got that uniform, _bratchny_," he called over to me, a naughty grin playing around the edges of his litso. "Y' would have 'ad your way with some devotchka in some starry casino, if y' hadn't let a rookerful of the more molodoy lewdies tolchock you down first. Good news travels real skorry around 'ere, don't it?"

Whatever horrorshow tale I'd been planning to tell 'em, it went straight to pot the minoota this malchick had spoken his pieces. His slovos were enough to make the rest of the East End malchicks start smecking out loud at me and my old shaika, because our rounds of nightly filly-time just didn't measure up in their glazzies. I had to endure the shoom of their smecking and like snorting for a dobby ten seconds at least, because the whole of the inky-black Cambridge seven had gathered around the desk by then. Several more minootas would have to pass by before they finished up, and so I would have to be the sad, malenky victim of the others' various chattering and like mutterings until the time came for us to be added. I couldn't really say I looked forward to all that.

"They don't seem to like you either, do they, brother?"

They didn't like me, either? That was a laugh, considering all of those not-so-friendly malchicks were in the 'Smeck at Billyboy' eegra together. One smot to my right told me they were still smecking and like joking about me, so how could one of 'em be just as hated as yours truly?

"Look to your other side, bratty."

One smot to my left, however, and lo and behold, there was one more malchick dressed up in charcoal, though not as bolshy or as tough-looking as the rest. A bit on the mousy side he was, complete with a light brown sort of voloss and a slightly darker brown set of the old glazzies. There was no need for me to say out loud how much he reminded me of Joel, because I'd already thought up such veshches in the safety of my rasoodock. Here sat the runt of the litter, and even he himself knew this to be a fact, along with all of the others.

"Can't say I blame you for looking elsewhere and like getting distracted," said Mr. Mousy. "I shrink into the background a lot, it's true."

"Cardiff recruits, step forward, please!"

Up went the nine with the snow-white platties, one of 'em giving me a death glare as he went along. Maybe that particular bratchny wanted to trade places too, did he?

"There's to be no shrinking around me, bratty," I told that malchick straightaway. "I do the standing and the going exactly where I wish to go, and I'll expect you to follow my lead always. Do you pony?"

One malenky nod from old Mousy, and I had myself a new droogie. If I managed to keep this one around much longer than any of the others, all the better for us both.

"Dobby! Now, if a malchick may be so bold...do tell me your eemya, and then I'll be sure to give you mine."

A short breath from my newly proclaimed droogie, and then I slooshied the slovos 'Rex Dresden' coming out of his rot. Another rough reminder of shaikas past for me, for even though one had been the King of the lions and the other was King of the Latins, either way, this mousy Mr. King would easily remind me of Leo every single time. Just one molodoy malchick all on his oddy-knocky, and he'd reminded me of two of my old droogs in only one day. It would take me a rookerful of time to get over this one malenky messel, no doubt in my rasoodock. 

"All right, then," I said slowly, like trying to keep my goloss at a stiff, stern level even though I knew I had a tremble inside and waiting to get out. "All right, Rex it is. A dobby eemya, that one...I take it you're from the C of R, then?"

There was only a nod from old Rex, as he needed no other slovos but silence itself, but I didn't mind. I had loads of other veshches to mull over first.

"You must be quite the church-goer, then, to not have any taste for the dratting or the tolchocking."

Another nod, followed by a smot towards the floor. This one just wasn't the govoreeting type, judging by the way he used the language of his plott rather than the language of his rot. He also wasn't the type to jump straightaway into a bitva the way I'd loved to do a long time ago. Some malchick would have to keep both glazzies on this one, or else all of these other East End prestoopnicks would eat him alive somehow.

"All right...and how did you come to join—"

"-_I stole some bread_!"

I'd gone and done some nasty sort of veshch now, because anyone could viddy quite clearly the way  
Rex had his rookers clenched into fisties with his litso suddenly whitish and sickly-looking. Something in Rex's mousy goloss also sounded close to bezoomny now, like telling me to back off slowly if I didn't want to stir up any trouble. There wasn't much else for me to do in return, other than hold up both of my own rookers in surrender because I didn't want to be the one to set him off.

"Durham recruits, step forward, please!"

There looked to be quite a lot of malchicks who did want the honor and glory of ruining mousy Mr. Rex, though, because no sooner did the East End seem done with him than those prestoopnicks from Durham passed us by, and at least half of 'em eyeing me and mine like they were the hunters and we were the prey. They might not have a problem with trying to take me out of the mix and send me back to the detention center by making me act up, as a load of other molodoy troublemakers had been known to do to each other.

Maybe they would also try like coming after Mr. Mousy himself just to viddy what I might do, and so end up with the same results that meant my diss-miss-all. Either way, I had started to get some of those odd feelings following me like they'd done after my time in solitary, only this time they were definitely on the inside, and not no monstrous invisible veshch walking about on the outside. Someday, I would have to give old Rex a malenky nudge to viddy if he would tell me more about this 'stolen bread', because I had a sort of idea that he might not be like speaking entirely of the truth. In the meantime, though, our itsy-bitsy shaika would have to keep itself together by any means necessary.

"Of course y' did, brother, of course," I said to that Dresden malchick, like getting my goloss under control. "We'll have no more talk of that now, maybe. Instead you get to hear my eemya, and how it's William for the long and Billyboy for the short. We'll have to stick close by each other from this minoota onwards, will we not?"

There were no more creeching slovos from this Rex, which I supposed might have been quite the dobby veshch if I ever had it. Instead there was just a malenky nod from him, along with what might have been a quieter look of acceptance rather than anger or not wanting to govoreet to me. This seemed promising. I just might have been able to teach a lesson or two to this new droogie of mine in the future, as he seemed to be more of a listener than a speaker. Maybe he'd also teach me a few veshches of his own, as he very well might be the silent learner that knew what other malchicks had pushed aside a long time ago. And if no more madness happened and these uniformed lewdies actually liked the idea of keeping us two malchicks together, maybe there would be loads of learning, indeed.

"Horrorshow. Now let's stay in the same mesto, brother Dresden, and viddy just what these rozzes have in store for us."

One more nod from Rex, and thus the two of us malchicks waited for whatever veshches were waiting for us at the counter. All the better to be surprised later on, I think.


	22. Chapter 22

**Twenty-Two**

Three days gone, and you might as well have given my plott its own goloss for the creeching the way it got me into all sorts of pain. I'd had it rough before, all right, what with getting shived up here and there with one nozh or another, and maybe a few tolchocks with some bottles and other wooden veshches besides. This wasn't nothing like that, though, because I had loads of muscles I didn't pony were there before burning and like raging inside of me now. It was only a matter of time, I guess, before I had to go and find out just how out of shape I turned out to be. Maybe that's what happens to a malchick when he's like sitting still for a good long time, and doesn't do much else but a malenky bit of walking back and forth for eight months' straight.

Anyways, three days of learning to be a rozz had brought me into this pain, because they had to make sure we stayed fit, and soon did just that with us exercising in the mornings and the evenings. The first session got done on the spot after waking and washing our litsos and before breakfast, because they couldn't have any full, drowsy malchickiwicks like stumbling their way through the movements. They also make sure the water's lukewarm before zero-eight-hundred hours, just so any spray of the cold wakes you up without also making you want to shiver. That way, when they've got you running in circles and like stretching out your arms and legs, and then trying to lift all those weighty veshches up and down, your glazzies are snapped wide open.

We get half an hour each for the waking, the washing and dressing, and the exercising altogether; in and out of three rooms from half-past six to half-past seven. Anybody who wasn't in that exercise room at half-past seven for three days running got himself written up, yelled at, and finally shipped right back on the detention center buses on account they weren't like following the rules. I got a malenky bit of a smeck out of that because some of those fancy-nancy chellovecks from Cambridge got themselves sent away for that early on. If there was one thing these rozzes just would not allow, it was one of their own not like practicing proper health procedures and all that cal.

And so, around eight o'clock when they think you've done enough for the morning and the veck in charge blows the whistle, it's off to the showers for about fifteen minootas or so, because they won't have a single filthy chelloveck or malchick showing up to breakfast like stinking of his own sweat. There was no problem for any of us going here, because it was a way to get rid of a malenky bit of our soreness as well as getting ourselves presentable. We would all then go straight to the dining hall for a nice, bolshy breakfast; making sure they could account for every single one of us by the time eight-thirty came. We were good and hungry when we showed up, of course, but they were more than ready for us.

The first time I viddied all of their pishcha, I thought I'd either snuffed it and gone off to the pearly gates, or else dreamed up the whole veshch. It wasn't until I first bit into a syrup-drenched waffle that I knew all of it was really happening. Along with those dobby waffles, they would give us eggiweggs and toast with butter or jammiwam, thin cuts of ham or bacon and thick rolls of sausage, apples, oranges and grapes on the side, and sometimes even sweet rolls dripping with white, sladky icing brought out all steaming and hot from the ovens. We would wash all this down with some good, old-fashioned coffee served black or with cream and sugar, just so we would be nice and alert for all those classes we'd be subject to next. Then, after clean-up time and the minootas reserved for like gathering up our books and supplies, it was off to the classrooms for some higher learning.

This new brand of skolliwoll wasn't any veshch like the boring stuff I had to do before, like some law of physiwicks or ex divided by why or how horrorshow the State supposedly was to its lewdies. This time around, there were much more bolshy veshches to think about now, like Laws of the State at nine, Public Relations at ten, and Gun Training at eleven. These classes had certain slovos attached to 'em like the difference between a jaywalker and a junkie, what to do when you spot a speeder, how to govoreet to witnesses of crimes as opposed to the victims, and how exactly they wanted us to shoot straight as well as which part of the paper lewdie we needed to fire the bullets into. It was that shooting, that like firing of the malenky bullets that caught my attention the most.

I hadn't forgotten my starry promises to myself or what I'd planned to do to those who'd helped to lock me away. I also would never forget how I had been forced to leave all my old droogies behind, Leo and Nick, Toby and Charlie, and poor Joel who none of us would ever viddy alive or smecking and joking around ever again. They were still going to get what was coming to _them_, make no mistake, because the Nadsat way would call for nothing less but absolute retribution.

The difference was, back when I had been like cooling off in the hospital or thinking all sorts of veshches over in the detention center, I knew what I wanted to do to 'em, but I had no messels as to how, where, or when that job would be done. Now, with me learning how to be a rozz, I knew exactly how—one dobby bullet straight through his gulliver would be the most horrorshow mesto for me to begin. Some more work would have to be done before I figured out how to deal with _her_, of course, but I could wait. I'd been patient for almost a year already, and if anything more happened, it would be me like acting all patient for a malenky while longer.

In the meantime, myself and the other rozzes-to-be would break for lunch around noon, and so enjoy a bit more of what Tom called 'the State's generosity'. We'd get at least six different sorts of sandwiches to pick from, either the plain meats like ham and turkey slapped together with either white or yellow cheese, or else meat mixed in with some other veshches like nuts and grapes and then labeled salad. To me, salad had once been a rookerful of greens left in a bowl and then handed to me plain with no dressings, so I had to sample that stuff two times over before I understood it.

We would also have more of these apples and oranges, along with some of the veg like malenky carrots and bits of cucumber, but none of the golden-brown, salted chips like I thought we might get. These weren't very healthy for us malchicks, or so the server told me. Neither did we have any desserts at the ready, because those were meant to be served shortly after dinnertime. What we got instead was some crunchy, multi-grainy veshch that you could have one rookerful of alongside everything else, and then some plain white moloko to wash it all down before we had to go back to our classes.

I supposed it was just as well, though. They couldn't go giving us any fatty veshches if they meant for us to go like chasing after all the prestoopnicks later on. Some moderating measures had to be made. And speaking of moderation...we would have four more classes to go to before they would let us turn in for the night. These classes would be Crowd Control at 12:30, Code of Conduct at 1:30, State History at 2:30, and finally Current Events at 3:30.

The first wasn't all that interesting to me, because it was mostly like practicing with a funny veshch called a whip, or else pretending to lead a bolshy gruppa of lewdies to some kind of terminal during a busy hour on the street, or else striking close to a target and acting like we were driving 'em off from a riot. That part made me feel a malenky bit sad, because there was no way to tolchock 'em real horrorshow out of pure punishment. Shame, really, because I knew of at least one lewdie in particular who would have deserved it.

Code of Conduct wasn't all that fun to me, either, because just like the class about the Laws, it was all rules, rules, and more rules. "Don't go to a certain place on patrol unless your superiors have it included ion your jurisdiction." "Always address your superiors as Sir, Officer, Inspector, Sergeant, etc." "Never let your uniform fall into disrepair unless you have no other choice; also, remember to keep it spotless and perfectly pressed before your patrol begins." All these long lines of slovos and rules and regulations were enough to drive a poor malchick's rasoodock completely bezoomny. Lucky I didn't have much else to do after classes but study 'em all one line at a time, slovo by slovo until I could recite 'em from memory.

That was how I got through that State History class as well, because we started like learning all about this bill and that proclamation and these lewdies who built that black skyscraper I'd once gone to. It was a malenky bit interesting for a while, because I could spot my old Granddad's eemya out of the gruppa that built half of the flatblocks and pony some of the starry vecks that thought up the State in the first place. However, soon it was nothing but eemyas and litsos and nothing else to keep my rasoodock sharp, so after a while I was just like going through the motions and waiting for that historical hour to end.

I have to say that just maybe, the Current Events hour might have been the easiest out of the entire second half, because it govoreeted about such veshches as fixing up one flatblock's Alec-tricity, and then another flatblock's water boiler, and still another flatblock's elevator shafts, and so on. That was the one malenky veshch I could be sure about when it came to the State's propaganda—all those news reels and other Statefilm tidbits could be like proving to me that they were cleaning up the city, one building at a time. I wouldn't care how such veshches were done, as long as they were done correctly.

I also didn't mind this other new veshch called "A Pound Store", which meant that a bolshy rookerful of locally-grown fresh fruits, fresh veg, and many other fresh types of pishcha would be available for the poorer lewdies for no higher than a pound each. _About fuckin' time._ They'd waited at least twenty years to figure that one out, and I very nearly went straight into a raging fit before thoughts of Meggie and Liam and Em distracted me. Of course that pound store would be just horrorshow for 'em. They had so very little to spend with after taxes and giving Jerome his fair share. Why couldn't they end up at such a mesto, when the usual fresh fruits and vegetables would get priced so high otherwise and handed over to richer lewdies instead? My rasoodock had started filling up with so many possibilities that I almost didn't viddy the next news story on the list. It was Rex who had to nudge me in the ribs before I paid it some proper attention.

"_Leading members of the scientific community have discovered a new method of re-education involving visual and auditory stimulation..."_

'Re-education'? That wasn't the sort of slovo a malchick could hope to hear in the average time of govoreeting between himself and his droogies. There probably wasn't a single veck in this classroom other than the instructor who remembered what it meant. My old Granddad still ponied it, though, because he'd told me a story about it the moment I viddied it brought up in the local gazetta. According to him, some twenty years or so ago the State as we all knew it to be nowadays first came to power, which meant that there were still a load of vecks, damas, and other lewdies still loyal to the old Queen Elizabeth III. They couldn't have that, oh no. Those lewdies in question had to get their rasoodocks re-wired to be more in tune with the new way. And so, to keep all of 'em from opening their rots and saying all sorts of baddiwad veshches against the State's daily doings, those lewdies got taken straight to some mesto out in the countryside for two weeks each. Each of 'em would go in like believing the new governors would fail and that their Good Queen Lizzie would come back, but they would feel and act just the opposite ways the minoota that those other lewdies let 'em come out. No more would they govoreet about how dobby the Starry Queen was to 'em, because all their slovos wold be about the State and how they suddenly liked 'em and all of their dealings. As to what this new re-education veshch had to do with me and mine, it would be quite a while before I could pony that entirely.

"_This process was first tried upon a preliminary group of white rats; who, while injected with an as-yet unnamed substance, demonstrated an adverse reaction to such normal behaviors as scratching and biting..."_

Rats. I remembered quite a few rats in our flat back when I was still very much the malenky malchick. I made sure that a lot of 'em went into a long line of homemade soups as subby-stitutes for chicken, beef, and other meats we couldn't get from the stores. It might have been a nice veshch to have 'em stand still whilst I tolchocked their gullivers in with a starry brick, but then again, viddying 'em moving and like scratching around to free themselves from my rookers was half the battle. It just wasn't the same if they couldn't fight back.

Those were just the rats, though, and easy targets at that. I doubted if I would want the same kind of challenge with the lewdies as I'd had with 'em. I never stopped remembering those lewdies who could have stood to learn what it's like to be defenseless, or in pain, or very very hungry and with no way to get any food to stop it. _They_ could definitely find out how it feels to get pinned down and viddy some other malchick shive all sorts of letters into their plotts. Maybe one day, I'd get the chance to viddy 'em like lying before me and too poogly to get up and fight. That would be the perfect time to put an end to 'em once and for all. In fact, I had no problem like carrying this messel around in my rasoodock for the rest of the day.

It would have loads of time to sit there, as we would all go on from classes to our early evening exercise at 4:30, our evening showers at 5, and then off to dinner at around 5:30. That was the time of the day I liked most, because right after our soups and sandwiches or our meat and potatoes or whatever else they viddied fit to give us, they would also let us have a malenky bit of cake on the side for our desserts. _That_ was a truly amazing veshch to behold, because very few lewdies back home could brag about having it in the nochy, and the ones who could always had theirs on the dry side with no icing. Ours were nice and moist instead, and every Sunday it would be drizzled with a very very light sort of glaze. I never mounched half so horrorshow as I did in this academy mesto, really. For all that, I wouldn't think twice about like playing along with all of their rules so that they wouldn't send me back to the detention center. I had too much on never viddying that mesto again, with or without Allen, Carlo, and Daniel still there and like wondering what I might be doing now.

I wouldn't have minded viddying any one of 'em coming here, though, especially since the hours of 6 to 8 at night were meant for family visits. None of us juvenile prestoopnicks would get to viddy anyone from our homes just yet, because it would take at least a week for the malenky rookerful of State messengers to gather up all of our addresses, and then odin by odin, send letters out to our families about how we were chosen to join up, and what a great honor it was, and that they could write us back at this new rozzes' mesto if they saw fit. It would be the other malchicks that would benefit from this first and foremost, the first group of the rozzes that had actually volunteered for the job and signed themselves up instead of someone else like making 'em come along. I could have volunteered and brought my new shaika along, too...but I never got that chance. It would be no small wonder, then, that us malchicks from the East End would come to hate these bratchnies from elsewhere, and so start up a rivalry between ourselves that would last us until graduation.

Some other veshches would have to happen before this rivalry got started, though, because sometimes a veck just has to open up his glazzies real wide until he's finally able to viddy everything nice and sharp like the end of a nozh. First would come some of these malchicks who had smecked at me before getting smecked at themselves, as well as the volunteering academy bratchnies like cracking jokes about the smell in the air had suddenly changed, which came as easily to them as the smecking at the poorer ones.

Next would come a rookerful of more insults, like how we might like the rotting food from the garbage cans a lot better than the good kind, because deep down we were nothing but garbage ourselves. Or better yet, since some of our Ems were whores and criminals, we would have to recommend 'em to these others if we hoped to get any Christmas presents this year. I almost let go of my plans to follow the rules right then and there, because a part of me would have loved to tolchock his gulliver in until he stopped breathing.

I managed to hold on for a malenky bit longer, though, at least until a few nights later when I woke up to viddy Rex like thrashing around in bed and creeching "No, no, no" like some animal wanted to razrez him to bits. It was just after I got him awake and then tried to settle him down that some new chelloveck came out of nowhere, shining this bright light into our glazzies and showing off some badge that belonged to a Hall Boy. That malchick's eemya, I hated to viddy and pony, was Robert Walker. And if the smot on his litso told me anything, I ponied that he already hated me very much, indeed.

**A/N: The idea that BB needed a new nemesis (at least for the time being) crept into my head last night, and lo and behold, Lydia's baby brother was born. Please let me know what you think.**

**Weasley**


	23. Chapter 23

**Twenty-Three**

There's no turning away once the spotlight's on you, even if you want to. All the one like holding it will do is make the damned veshch follow you wherever you try to escape. There's also no smotting away from it, not when it's shining straight into your glazzies. All a lewdie can really do is stare right back into the light, and hope it doesn't blind you in the end. That was how it was when I first viddied Robert Walker up close, and he did likewise to Rex and yours truly.

"Your little _boyfriend_ screams loud enough to wake this entire floor," that Robert govoreeted in a low sort of goloss, ignoring the groans from some of the other chellovecks as he woke 'em up.

"What was he doing anyway, sampling your ass?"

_Is _that_ what makes you hot under the collar, dear Robbie?_

"Having a nightmare, I'm afraid."

I didn't blink for that bratchny, oh no, not even once. Instead, I gave him my very best grin like he couldn't do one single veshch to me, showing my zoobies on purpose to throw him off and work him up. If he was hoping for an excuse to shive open my gorlo, unfortunately tonight wouldn't be the nochy he received it. Oh, what a shame.

"All right."

With a malenky sigh of annoyance, off went that nasty flashlight. The darkness that followed was more than enough to relieve mine and Rex's glazzies put together.

"See to it he has a quieter nightmare the next time."

"Anything you say, guv."

With his nasty malenky flashlight now off, the even nastier Robert went off as well, and so left us poor bratchnies to the mercy of the black. So much the better, maybe, because that was when I thought I slooshied Rex heave out a sigh of relief—or was it embarrassment? Either way, that Walker was nowhere close by to viddy it, so whatever was on Rex's litso that nochy was hidden from view.

"Well, he was in a horrorshow sort of mood."

I didn't want our minoota of govoreeting to end, though, so I tried to keep old Rex's attention for just a malenky bit longer.

"What d'you think is wrong with _him_, I wonder? Some kind of rat up his arse?"

I went quiet on purpose to give him some raz to toss back a few naughty slovos of his own, or else to have a tiny smeck or two...but unfortunately, I wound up with just the opposite. I couldn't get that moodge into the latrines skorry enough to block out whatever shooms might set the others into one bolshy, bezoomny fit over lack of spatchka. I couldn't drat 'em all on my oddy-knocky, no doubt about it. Right now, the only real veshch I could do was improvise.

And so, I tried like making up for it by gathering up a rookerful of the tissue paper and passing it straight to Rex so he could dry his glazzies all proper. Some nasty veshch that old Robbie had done or said had upset him, after all, so his being disturbed had to be fixed up before he disturbed the others by accident.

"Just leave that gloopy shoot to me, brother," I told him, like going out of my way to be comforting.

"He might be all rot and no rasoodock for all we know, yeah? You can't let him knock you down like that, though, it won't do either of us much good. I remember, back when I was still in skolliwoll—"

"-_Him_...?"

Rex's goloss didn't rise above a whisper, but it was enough to put a chill into me just the same.

"Oh no no _no_, brother. I didn't let _him_ do anything..."

A few ragged breaths in and out, and then I slooshied this from beginning to end:

"...It's what I let _her_ do."

"Her?"

If his glazzies went any lower, they might have vanished into his litso entirely.

"She had a _nozh_, brother...a nozh, for Bog's sake..."

My first messel was of these three devotchkas who got known for drugging some malchicks just enough to seduce 'em, and then give 'em a place of honor once they wrote these malchicks' eemyas on their groodie pins. The minoota I tried like guessing about 'em to poor Rex Dresden, though...well, he just shook his gulliver at me and went on.

"I wish it _had_ been one of them."

The poison water came easy from his glazzies now, and he didn't bother using any tissue paper to stop it.

"She just couldn't let me say yes, though. She _wouldn't_. Not when she'd been goolying down my street off and on, and coming into the neighborhood games, and her being eight years ahead of me..."

Was it just my nasty, malenky imagination, or was there now a sort of cold feeling in the air...?

_Stop the chepooka, Antonelli,_ I told myself. _It can't be that baddiwad. He's a veck after all, yeah?_

"Easy, brother, _easy_ now. No need to get yourself all worked up at this raz of the nochy. I'm sure you just gave her a good tolchock over the gulliver, and then—"

"_She forced me!_"

No way for me to govoreet any further, I think...not after like hearing this malenky line. There's no lovely answer waiting to come out of my rot...and, sadly, Rex knew exactly why.

"What, you think that's impossible? You weren't the first to say so, and you _won't_ be the last...but I don't think you can lecture me on any part of it, now, can you? Not when you know how to do the _same_ damned veshch, and with no shame, neither!"

Still no slovos from me, even as he drove a fistie into his glazzies to stop the poison water from coming out. Should I have driven a fistie into that rot that very minoota, or better still, taken my own fistie and choked myself with it?

"It's—it's just fucking funny as hell, though, right? All she had to do was say that I forced her into it, show 'em my prints on the nozh handle, dab some of her own krovvy down below, and _there_! Instant case against me!"

_Just a few fingerprints and a splash of blood is all it takes, is it...?_

"Case?"

"_Aye_. So many vecks and malchicks raping and rampaging, what's one more to punish?"

Another fistie into the old glazzies, although that poison water would go on for at least five minootas more. As much as I hated to admit it, poor malenky Dresden did have a point. It was the perfect cover for this unnamed devotchka, rotten though she was, because she easily blended in with all the other victims like wandering around all pained and poogly out of their rasoodocks. Any lewdie under the Luna or Solar would have sympathized with her on the spot, and so not given a second messel to him that may or may not have truly done it.

On the other hand...all of this was back _before_ we stopped being malenky prestoopnicks, and entered on the path of the straight and narrow instead. All sorts of messels were like itching away at my own rasoodock now, messels that wouldn't keep quiet until long after I'd gone back to my bed. What had the rozzes been known to do for centuries? Catch the criminals and lock 'em away for as long as humanly possible. And so, what would any decent newcomer to this Force do to start himself off...?

"All right then, old droogie," I said slowly, like pretending just a little that it was time for us to go back to bed. "Let's just go catch up on our spatchka, and not think about that soomka for the rest of the nochy, yeah? We can't go up next morning with nasty circles under our glazzies and even nastier slovos in our rots."

A kindly tone in my goloss and a few pats of my rooker didn't seem to do much for poor Rex except confuse him. Lucky for this new droog, however, I was far from any confusion of my own.

"Oh, and one more veshch before we go, brother..."

Just as I got him to think I had turned away from his troubles, I chose that very second to turn back and give him some dobby parting slovos to think about:

"...Neither you nor I are like being punished any more, now...are we?"

I left him behind in the restroom right then and there, because for the minoota, my rabbit was over and done with. The bits and bobs in my rasoodock didn't want to stop there, however, because that was when I viddied poor dead Joel standing in the corner, like taking a long pull off his cancer and not a single scratch on his gulliver. It took a lot inside me not to go running up to him and giving him a good poke to see if he was really there.

"You got yourself a few horrorshow heaps to worry about now, don't you, Kaiser?"

"Piles and heaps together, droogie." There was no way to refuse him a chat, not when I could viddy him plain as the moonlight.

"You'll look after him, though, won't you, Billyboy? Watch that Rex like you couldn't watch me?"

My rot went dry after this, but somehow I still got myself to govoreet regardless.

"_Exactly_ like I couldn't watch over you."

Joel must have been satisfied to slooshy that, so very satisfied that he gave me a pat or two of his own rooker for good measure.

"I _always_ knew it, Billyboy. I always knew I could count on you."

"Oh, yes," I agreed to the now-empty hallway. "You _can_ always count on me."

**A/N: My mind is so jumbled with so much irony, I don't think I'll be able to continue this and my Pete story until next month at the earliest. Forgive me for rambling, but I'm still wondering why Alex's actions are instantly excusable because he got cast to an actor that's supposedly easy on the eyes. Thank you and goodnight...for now.**

**Weasley**


	24. Chapter 24

**A/N:** I suffered a bit of writer's block by the time I finished the shooting practice scene. There was a part of me that wanted to make this chapter dark, but then I realized that being in a police academy might not be a completely ultraviolent experience. There's a steady food source, decent sleeping quarters, and on top of that, BB has no Jerome to give him hell for mouthing off. So! Just to be different, this chapter takes on a slight domestic edge towards the middle. As always, I hope I made the right choice.

P.S.: The first part was inspired by the bulletproof vest practice sequence in the 'Kick-Ass' graphic novel series and film adaptation. Thank you, Mark Millar, for giving me an anti-heroine I can believe in, as well as an ultraviolent muse that easily carries over into this fandom. Oh yes...and one more thing: the first person to spot the Reservoir Dogs allusion in this chapter gets to make a request for one thing they'd like to see in the next (no romantic Alex, please, he's already got fifty million romance novels about that already). Peace out!

**Twenty-Four**

"I changed my rasoodock, brother. You go first."

"No such veshch, droog, it's _your_ training exercise, too. Bit late to act like a malenky malchick now."

Me and old Rex had been signed up for the body armor training room this afternoon, and so we had no problems like suiting up in the special bulletproof platties and helmets meant for the rozz-shops. Once we'd come in to viddy an automatic shooting machine that would show us what taking a bullet felt like, however, my new droog started to have his doubts.

"That machine's supposed to shoot real skorry, though," he insisted, giving the dark metal veshch a sideways sort of smot.

"What if...what if everything goes wrong, and..."

He shook his gulliver to get rid of that nasty messel, but I knew what he meant. Man-made veshches like this could always break down and not fire at all, or else work a malenky bit _too_ well, and start going bang-bang-bang at us before we were even in position. I didn't feel any worries like Rex did, though, because some of our teachers had sent out a rookerful of medical staff to look after us if any baddiwad veshches were to indeed occur. That, and I'd been careful to read all the machine's instructions so that I'd know what to do when the proper raz came. And so, since I planned to be ready, it was only fair that Rex learned to get ready, too.

"_Nothing_ is going to go wrong, Dresden. Our brains and our hearts are well-protected, remember?"

The machine's already on and warmed up, but of course I waited for the go-ahead from Rex before I got behind the trigger. Anything less, and there would be no way I could properly call myself his best droog.

"Now you better stand still, this will only take a s-"

That bullet was out and into his helmet before either of us could blink our glazzies. He wasn't hurt a malenky bit, though. It got stuck there above the rim before it could do him any pain. Still, the rush was enough to make him grab at his gulliver and feel where the bullet was, _just_ to be sure.

"There we are. Not so baddiwad after all, was it?"

A few more shakes of his gulliver, and he almost looked a malenky bit annoyed with me.

"Says _you_. You're the one doing the shooting."

"All right, then, smot at it this way. Some bratchny tries to be a hero, they won't take you down completely unawares."

With that, I went to take aim again, this raz going for the brooko like I'd viddied this movie rozz get when he tried to take down a gang of colorful prestoopnicks from the inside out.

"Ready for another?"

"Two more times, then we switch places, Antonelli."

"You got yourself a deal, droogie."

I was careful to count under my breath Odin-dva-tri as he got into position. It was only after he braced himself that I finally pulled the trigger.

* * *

Many days and nights came and went before we found ourselves in November; not quite ready for the big season of presents and sweet stuff, but still fairly close to the middle-of-the-year tests. By then, myself and Dresden had figured out a malenky system of like keeping our house in order—on the mornings of the weekdays, I would be responsible for making sure he got up; whilst on the mornings of the weekends, he would gladly take his turn nudging me out of bed. Today was one of those days.

I didn't remember much about the nochy before, just that we had gone over 'The Laws of the Land' for what might have been the third raz on this particular week. After that, we had a slightly better set of hours smotting something called 'Bad Lieutenant', because I hoped just a malenky bit that I'd be able to sniff up the same powders and utterly _fuck_ the same amount of devotchkas as that head veck in the picture. Once I managed to open up my glazzies the morning after and let the blinding sunshine in or whatever those merzky druggies warbled about, it got even better.

"Yeah, you probably should sit up for this one, droogie. I wouldn't want you like choking on these breakfast tarts."

I stuck out a rooker to pull myself upright, but not without remembering a few minootas of my latest searching dream. I was in that red hallway as usual and also goolying toward the white door, but I also happened to slooshy some malenky ptitsa platching in the distance. Maybe I'd been thinking about Meggie before I went into the big dreamland, or else I missed like shoving the fancy-clothed ptitsas against the walls as I used to do on my way to skolliwoll and back. Either way, I had to admit my gulliver felt just the slightest bit stuffed.

"There we are. Two for each of us, and a nice flavored coffee besides."

"One minoota, brother," I yawned, like pulling myself upright and out of bed.

"No rush, droogie," he agreed.

It felt like a very long walk to the sink with my gulliver all stuffy and unable to think, but I managed anyway. I had to keep up with the skolliwoll's rule about dobby hygiene, after all, and so that meant an acceptable cheest for my litso and rookers along with like brushing my voloss right after I woke. I shaved only when I felt like it, though, probably just one raz a month, if not once every two months instead. No other veck back home worried about goolying around beardless, so it would only be fair for yours truly to do the same in true East End fashion. As for the trip to the showers, _that_ could wait until after I had my breakfast.

"Done and _done_," I muttered to myself, rubbing a fistie into one of my glazzies after I'd washed and dried. The time had come to go mounch on my share of the breakfast tarts, peet down my cup of mocha, and then get ready to go slooshy to this veck that Rex called 'The Preacher', although of course I had no idea if he would actually make sense or just spit out a heap of chepooka like the Padre before him. My history with these so-called religious lewdies wasn't looking too horrorshow so far, and so one more baddiwad slovo from 'em would just make all manner of veshches only get worse.

I wouldn't allow that malenky fact to bring me down, though. I had a lot more to worry about than a few bezoomny vecks in black vestments who couldn't govoreet to save their souls.

"Right, then, Dresden, I'm back. Better enjoy these before they get up and gooly someplace else, yeah?"

Just one bite, and I know that old Rex had come up with the best of ideas. That crusty bit of smoked ham and cheese and onions and eggiweg just about exploded into my rot, it was so amazingly good and meaty and filling. That flavored coffee wasn't so bad either, because it was hot and sladky and more than enough to sharpen me up for the morning. No doubt about it—whatever small rookerfuls of cutter Rex got from home, he was definitely using 'em for a good and noble purpose.

It was here that I realized how, even though there was no longer a need to scavenge, I still wouldn't have minded like teaching Dresden how to hunt down his next meal. Had it really been almost one year since I'd shived the gorlo of that fat, bolshy Labrador? It had to be, because the very first snow of the winter was almost upon us. Would I have remembered what to do if I'd been pushed out onto the streets tomorrow, and made to look after myself all over again? My rasoodock didn't have a single answer to that question. The one veshch that I did know was this—hunter-gatherer or not, one year away from the old homestead only made me miss it even more.

"Everything dobby over there, brother?"

I used to be so horrorshow about like making up all sorts of excuses. I also knew the right combination of slovos to make a lewdie so poogly, they would just about piss themselves until they got soaked. How is it, then, that I have no idea how to answer this one malenky question?

"Whatever could you be like thinking about?"

Would it have been a safe sort of veshch to tell of my ever-nagging sense of the homesick?

"Simple. I was thinkin' about hunting."

"Hunting?"

"_Yes_. It's what a lot of the malchicks in the flatblock had to do to keep from like starving to death. Ever chased down a Retriever for your meat?"

Dresden went all quiet for about one minoota, but I could tell how he was only rummaging around for a dobby answer. He just needed to pick out the right slovos first.

"Not the chasing and shiving, mind, but yeah...I hunted around a time or two. Plenty of good fruit trees out in the countryside to go crasting from, if you get my drift."

Imagine _that_. Old Rex, knowing how to crast when the rich lewdies weren't smotting?

"I didn't take 'em all, though, just...one or two off the bottom, then I'd move on to the next one. Skimming, like. I could bring home a whole sackful every few days that way."

"Of course you could, brother. Honest living after all, yeah?"

It was rather convenient that they didn't hide any radios in the walls, at least not to my knowledge. I would have hated to viddy poor Dresden get another year added onto his sentence, and him sent back to the official correctives.

"Those days might be behind us, though, or at least as much as I can tell. Still..."

For old times' sake, I mimed like reaching down and shiving open the gorlo of some stray mutt with an unseen nozh.

"No veshch like a good kill to keep the krovvy flowing, especially _first_ thing in the morning."

"I know something better."

Right as Rex let these slovos out, his litso turned a malenky bit red. Something very very odd was going on this morning.

"_Oh_...? Will you explain this 'better' veshch, brother Dresden?"

"Well, ah...I'd gone out to find us our breakfast, see...and along the way, I came upon this devotchka-"

"-A devotchka? _Really_?"

How very odd, indeed.

"-And I think that if I see her again, maybe I could ask her to-"

"-_Forget her_."

I watched in silence as his litso went from reddish to whitish, but I didn't feel the slightest bit baddiwad about it. There were a load of more important veshches in this jeezny than a bit of like consenting pol.

"W..._What_?!"

"I don't believe I stuttered, droogie. _Forget_ her. _Leave_ her. Save yourself before the soomka robs you blind."

I was about to take another sip of my sladky mocha when Rex went and sent this weird sort of smot straight at me.

"Don't be gloopy, Antonelli. Jessa would _never_ do that."

"I'll be as gloopy as I dare, _Dresden_, and anyways, how can you be so sure? Did you viddy her like trying to buy her own mounch alongside you?"

"Yes, I did."

"And then what did y' do?"

"We govoreeted."

"Govoreeted about what?"

"Normal veshches, droogie. The cold. Midterms. Plans for Crimbo. You should try like doing that sometime."

"_Ha_!"

I had been perfectly fine with like living in this neat and tidy dor-mee-tory. I had also been perfectly fine with mounching on three meals a day and like govoreeting please and thanks to the workers of the skolliwoll.

"That's not going to happen."

What I _wasn't_ fine with was the way Dresden thought I should just give up and start letting those damned soomkas gooly all over me.

"I've got more important veshches on my mind than what some gloopy ptitsa wants to dig out of my carmans, thank you very much."

"What kind of veshches?"

"Getting through this middle-of-the-year test. Getting out of this Academy. Getting myself back home and back to the old flatblock, _where I belong_, Dresden, as do you. You think I can manage to do all of these veshches and start running after a few skirts at the same raz?"

Rex wasn't glaring or wanting to snap at me, but I could still viddy his annoyance. I could be annoyed too, though.

"_Do you?_"

He didn't come back at me with any angry slovos, or angry smots, or angry anything. I could tell I'd won by the way he lowered his glazzies and shook his gulliver oh no no no. Well, horrorshow. Nothing like a little law and order to keep the peace between us.

"Yeah, _exactly_, brother. I didn't think so, either."

Neither one of us derelicts thought to fight each other further...at least, not yet we didn't. That wasn't just because there was no fighting allowed in the dorms, but also because we were still on the hungry side, and so went back to finish our shares of the breakfast. Funny how an empty brooko can be a sladky motivator every now and then. I was careful this raz, too, for I kept my old rot closed until I could be sure that we'd both had a malenky bit more to mounch down and peet up. If I hoped to turn Rex over to my line of sight—and I did—I would have to make sure the malchickiwick was in a dobby mood first.

"Besides, droogie. How about we be reasonable for one minoota, yeah? It's not a like loving relationship these devotchkas fantasize about, anyway. I viddied and slooshied it all the time when I was back in skolliwoll all those months ago. Some nice-looking veck comes along, all they want to govoreet about is that he pins 'em down and has his way, even if he puts 'em in the hospital for it. They think it's a dobby veshch to get into, pain or no pain, as long as they've got candy for their glazzies. Do _you_ think that's a dobby veshch, Dresden?"

His annoyance wasn't as much as before. I could viddy that rather clearly, all right. In fact, I could almost swear that this droog of mine was almost like agreeing with me, but only in that this should be as disagreeable as possible.

"Well, there we are, then. There's no point in trying some veshch that y' know you can't win at, especially when a bratchny like yours truly can't ever hope to get some devotchka's attention ever. Not unless it's to smeck at me and mine, which in that case, you'll find a line of lewdies all ready and like willing."

"You don't _exactly_ make it hard for 'em sometimes, brother."

"And that's not counting the others who wouldn't dare put a rooker on a young prestoopnick like myself."

"Again, that's not totally their fault."

"And even if there was, she's definitely not on this island. The only veshch these damas _do_ pine away for is free cutter, and _doubly_ so they have a good reason not to run to the rozz-shop when their vecks tolchock 'em to splinters."

"Are you sure about that?"

"You viddy it all the time in the schoolyards and in the streets before the Solar goes down. First malchick to show up gets driven off once the first question out of her rot is how much money he's got. Why would I not be sure?"

"Maybe not all of 'em are taught to dig for the shiny stuff, brother."

"Oh? And how can _you_ be sure?"

There's an odd sort of like smirking on Dresden's face now, some veshch that, if I did not know this one so well, I might almost be poogly because of it.

"I could assure it if I looked hard enough around the island, of course...that is, if someone were willing to make a bet of it."

"A _bet_."

"Sure. I won enough cutter to buy us both that mounch down there, didn't I? All it took was a few slovos from me on how this snowboarder wouldn't make it down the hill. Two minootas later, down he went into his own loss. I'm feeling so dobby that I'm like willing to try again, so...how about it? Ten euros and your iron will against my skills?"

It was a good two minootas before I made up my rasoodock about this, because for the first of those two, I thought well about telling him no no _no_, definitely _not_. I had too many other veshches to worry about, just as I'd already govoreeted to him, and so I should not have been about to put one more piece of my own plotting on the line by smotting around for some sharp as well. That was almost like inviting trouble to the front door, as I'd slooshied Jerome say once.

Then I had to go and notice this odd malenky smirk on old Rex's litso, and that was when my favorite feeling of rage took over that which I feeared it might have lost. No wimpy, whining, present-obsessed ptitsa was going to take _me_ down without a knock-down, drag-out drat, not when I'd come so far already and wanted to go a lot further before I finally snuffed it. If Dresden wanted a challenge, I'd make sure that he got one.

"Well...come on, then. You find me the right sort of devotchka that's not after my cutter, you'll not only get ten euros, but also a front-row seat in the room below the spot where I fuck her good and proper. You'll get to slooshy to all of her writhing and like creeching from the start to the big finish, yeah? I might be alone, but I'm by no means lonely or gentle neither. How about it, Dresden? Still up for the eegra?"

"You got yourself a deal, droogie."

One shake of our rookers was all that was needed to get this plan going. For good or for ill, this new droog of mine was out on the lookout for somebody more or less impossible, that is, if she hadn't already gotten off this island no thanks to all the crime and corruption. If not, though, well...all I could really wonder about through the rest of breakfast was that if I'd just bought some ticket for heavenly bliss, or else signed in blood for a slow ride through hell and damnation. It wasn't until we'd both finished and dressed up for the service that I let the chilly fall air drive away all of these messels until later.

* * *

**Parting Thoughts: It's taken me several months to slosh my way through writer's block, but I'm very glad to have this latest installment done before the end of this year. I very nearly feared that I had lost interest in this story, yet perhaps this isn't the day I let it go. Not when I've decided to let the characters have almost full control in determining this story's outcome, instead of forcing my optimism on them and turning them into sugar-filled cardboard shells of their former selves. That being said...this is probably gonna just get more psychological as time goes on, never mind probably also a lot more unnerving than it ever was before. I just hope I have the inspiration and concentration to pull it off.**


End file.
